This is going to be an interesting post to write. Why? Because I’m going to write it over the course of almost a month, whereas most of my posts (even those crazy long ones) are written in one, at most two, sittings. The reason for the structure is partially a matter of time. Some of the things I want to talk about simply haven’t happened yet! But, thanks to the magic of the internet and magnets, I can actually start writing a post now and finish it at some point in the far-flung future (but prior to the Matrix being reset again). So, while this portion is being written at the beginning of July, this post probably won’t actually pop up until late July or early August. Fun!

So, with that said, consider this post the chronological follow up to my graduation post. While my “5 Years of Dinosaur Bear” post is technically the most recent post to this, it’s sort of out in its own timeline, whereas this post picks up right after the graduation post ends. To be even more macro, this is actually a follow up to my “Boston Pre-Game” post from 3 years ago (wow). I figure if you have a pre-game, you should probably have a post-game as well. So here it is, the twilight of our Boston chapter! 🙂

Truth be told, most of what has been happening is the super-awesome-magical-rainbow-adventure of studying for the bar. I considered writing about that in this post, but I think – if time permits – that I’ll write a post about the bar exam in the future. There’s a lot to talk about and I can probably share more insight after I’ve taken the exam. In the meantime, just know I’ve been studying 5-6 days a week doing full-time job type hours (and I’m still getting my ass handed to me by practice tests). Sadly the bar exam is like pretty much every other test on Earth and is (statistically) far more difficult now than it was 10 years ago, let alone 20 or 30+. But I digress!

In addition to bar studying, things have actually been pretty dang busy. A lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re getting ready to move – but it’s not an ordinary move. It’s a move 1000 miles to the west, followed by an immediate move 3,100 miles back to the east. Yeah, odd, I know. To make things even more wacky, that move will eventually be followed by a move 4,000 miles back to the west. We’re silly like that.

The relevance of this is that we are downsizing – a lot. Why? Because we are going to be getting another moving truck! Yes, one of Lillian’s family members! In fact we’ve preemptively named our truck Lucy – though that is subject to change upon meeting the truck (for instance we didn’t know Beckett was Beckett until we met him). We’re actually getting another truck the same size as Lillian, so truck space isn’t a huge concern (though things that were in boxes then are now built). The reason we’re getting rid of things is two fold. First, we have not forgotten the hell that was moving into this apartment. Sure, this time we’d be going down the stairs – but both SB and I very much decided that that was sort of a “Hahaha, woo that was a funny memory, haha, fun times, but never again. Nope.” kind of moment. By slowly getting rid of things leading up to the move, it makes the move itself much easier. Second, we’ll be storing pretty much everything we own and FIL was kind enough to offer space. Subsequently, we’re trying to downside as much as feasible in order to use less of his space.

Out with the old and in with the nothing, I suppose. Though in fairness we did have to acquire a few new things for the move – but a $335 gift certificate for Amazon that I had redeemed some LexisNexis (a legal research tool – I should have gotten $340 but nope they stopped letting me accumulate points after I graduated, bummer) research points for more than paid for all of that. 🙂

The good news is that we got some money by selling things. The bad news is that we have to deal with people and that we have to part with beloved items such as Philip, the TV SB and I have owned since shortly after moving in together and the first “big” purchase of our life together. Aside from one little bout of sickies – which occurred within the warranty period (thanks Philip!) – Philip has been great. Philip was also the last of his line to be built in the U.S.A., so he is a special TV. But alas, Philip is huge and isn’t getting any easier to move. So Philip was on the list of items that had to be sold. Fortunately the person who bought him was really nice and I feel good about Philip’s new home. It started pouring rain right as we got Philip down the stairs, but I had saved the big foam/plastic bag Philip had been inside of inside the box (pack-rat for the win! – I still had the box too) so that wasn’t much of an issue. I had forgotten how heavy Philip was, he was a big boy.

Other items included some tables we’d had since before Philip, as well as bunch of other things ranging from <1 to more than 9 years old. I even ended up selling my Playstation 3 (which I’d had since it launched in 2006) as well as my entire weight set. I (and Tristen) was a bit mixed on selling them, but I decided I might as well because we needed the money and it was less stuff to move. Most of what we sold was furniture or furniture-like though (the only things of that nature we are keeping are our bed and small couch).

The real issue with selling stuff is the fact that you have to deal with other humans to, you know, get money. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve sold things in several different places now and by-and-large, people kinda suck. I think as a general rule, you can say that 90% of all sales will fail. Heck, it’s so predictable that I feel like you can safely classify potential buyers – who ultimately don’t buy – as follows, they are listed in ascending order from least to most annoying.

The “I’m interested in this item” Buyer – They message you with interest, then never respond again. These people are: not really that annoying, just weird.

The “I want to buy it” Buyer – They message you affirmatively wanting to buy the item with a price. You agree or make a counteroffer and they never respond. These people are: not really that annoying, but even more weird than the first category.

The “I agree to buy this and pick it up, but I want to ask 500 questions after the fact” Buyer – These people are the first that get annoying. They want an item, tell you they want an item, you agree on a price – and sometimes even a pickup time – then they proceed to ask 500 questions about the item, such of which are super freaking specific. Questions are fine, but ask them before you agree to buy the item. These people inevitably back out, but only after they’ve wasted like an hour of your time. These people are: kinda annoying.

The “I’m not going to read anything in the description but offer to buy the item anyway” Buyer – These people are either stupid, lazy, or illiterate (or all three). They will not only ask you questions explicitly answered in the listing, but they will contradict you on your own item. They are also prone to ask for photos already in the listing. The worst is when you state – twice – that the item is pickup only, but then they demand delivery. Chances of a sell are usually zero with these folks, and they are even more annoying than category 3 because these people seem to think they know more about the item than you do, whereas category 3 just wants to know how many atoms your desk contains. These people are: pretty annoying.

The “I’m going to lecture you on why you’re wrong” Buyer – The first of the real assholes. These buyers will express (or feign) interest in an item just so they can tell you why your price sucks and that you should probably pay them to take it from you. Common response are “But I could buy I NEW item for [insert random amount of money here], what makes you think your piece of junk is worth that much!” The annoyance is compounded by the fact that they are, unequivocally, either lying or stupid. I do a lot of research into an item’s value prior to posting, and the numbers they throw out, quite simply don’t exist outside of people giving stuff away for free (which certainly happens). It’s mostly an aggressive bargaining tactic, but what makes it “next level” annoying is when they realize their ploy didn’t work, so they get pissed off at you. This category also includes people who take the moral “high ground” when something happens that they don’t like – sometimes right even after they’ve screwed you, which is actually just as funny as it is aggravating. This people are: Very annoying.

The “Scammer” Buyer – Kind of straight forward, they try to scam you. Some are really dumb, and want you to wire them like $200 so they can pay you $500 at some point in the future for a $40 item. Others are more intelligent and have adopted trendy payment platforms such as Venmo. The good news is that scammers are also really predictable, and you can largely eliminate them by dealing solely in cash (I’ve yet to be given counterfeit money). Scammers are inherently annoying, and the reason I rank them above category 6 is because scammers are like a combination of categories 5 & 6 once revealed as scammers. These people are: very annoying.

The “Want the item, agreed on the price, agreed on the time – but never shows up” Buyer – F*ck these people, no seriously, they are scumbags. The only exception to this is if they are dead. Outside of that, f*ck them. These are the people who who go through the entire process, right up until they are supposed to show up, then proceed to fall off the face of the Earth. Most modern messaging systems allow you to see if a person has read your message, and these people always do, they just don’t respond to it. They, in all their narcissism, choose simply to just not show up and then ignore you, rather than let you know in advance they’ve chosen to back out of the deal. Of course you have a legally enforceable contract with these people, but is it really worth the time to sue their asses over $60? Actually I think I probably would, lol, but maybe at some point in the future when I have more time to be bitter. What makes these people so infuriating, aside from just being assholes, is that they inconvenience you because you adjust your own schedule, but they also cause you to miss out on other people who want the item – and who might actually have showed up. And lest you think I’m being the asshole, they could literally avoid the entire situation by sending a single message, but nope, they choose to be pricks. These people are: extremely annoying.

Now, to counterbalance that, some people end up being really nice. Other people are odd.. in that they show up to buy one thing, but then claim they are here to buy something else which wasn’t even listed (this actually happened, but they paid full price for the other item, so I can’t complain too much). But at the end of the day, it’s still a mostly frustrating process, and I stand by both my 90% number and the seven categories listed above. Fortunately there’s that last 10% of people who allow you make some money before you move.

So, anyways, we’ve been selling a lot of stuff. As a result our apartment is in that phase where your furniture begins to get slowly replaced by boxes and shipping crates. It’s around this time that you start to realize that, yes, you are in fact moving. Indeed, a lot of what’s been keeping us busy has been related to moving. But that doesn’t mean it’s all been about moving. There’s been a lot of fun little things going on as well, such as enjoying our newest beer classes courtesy of FIL!

Which of course are much better with beer than they are empty.

Speaking of beer we tried a “Buttered Beer” recipe from 1588. This is not to be confused with “Butterbeer” for your Harry Potter fans, this is an actual recipe that was first recorded in 1588 but probably predates that by quite a bit. It was.. interesting. Can’t say I’d make it again, but if you were a starving peasant I’d imagine it would be quite tasty and more importantly quite filling.

In an effort to use some of our ingredients before moving, we’ve also been digging into our stockpile of things like flour. As a result, the boys have been getting treated to quite a few things like pancakes. Here Valentino and Pig can be seen being a little impatient for breakfast.

We’ve also even had a sighting of the “Harvard Turkey” (a solo female turkey that even has her own Facebook page – though there actually quite a few turkeys around Harvard)!

Though I wasn’t with her (study-time), SB did spend a Sunday down at Pleasure Bay where she got to see some little crab buddies! The buddies excited me enough that we decided to make it down there again together (read on!).

Photo courtesy of SB.

In fact, after our really rainy, relatively shitty Spring weather-wise, the weather has been pretty decent the past month or so.

Photo courtesy of SB.

As such, and due to the fact that we are in our “Post-Game” period after all, we sat down and made a list of things we wanted to do before we are gone at the end of the month. The first of which was to celebrate Murka’s 241st birthday! While we didn’t actually go out for the 4th of July, it was still pretty exciting because this was SB and I’s first 4th of July together in 3 years (though I had at least one or two neat ones in the interim). That said, we did go out and get some very American things like hotdogs, chips, beer, and pie. Valentino even dug headfirst into some cherries we had!

For the booze we already had some Harpoon in the fridge, but I wanted something in a can – seemed more Murka’ – so we headed over to Broadway and SB picked up something called “Mighty Swell” which is a sparkling cocktail (though Untappd oddly considered it a malt beer) and I got some “Fresh Cut” from Peak Organic.

The Mighty Swell is the type of alcohol that normally isn’t my cup of tea, but I actually liked it. The Fresh Cut, which is a pilsner, was also really good. It has a crisp, almost grassy (thus the name) taste to it as well as a smooth body with just a bit of foam on the edges. It’s good from a can, or maybe that’s just the freedom talking.

As mentioned, we also got a pie. We went with a mini-blueberry pie and decided to have that with some cinnamon graham crackers we already had at home (merica’).

The boys for their part were very eager to dig into the pie.

So we had hotdogs, chips, guacamole, blueberry pie, graham crackers, and booze. It was a good 4th of July. What’s cool is that we can see a good chunk of the Boston fireworks from where we live. There’s one tree that blocks a decent chunk of them, but it’s good enough and close enough for us. The whole show, plus the Boston Pops concert leading up to it have traditionally been on the local version of CBS, but this year they switched it to Bloomberg TV – which we don’t get despite Comcast saying we do (go figure). Bloomberg did offer a web-stream of the show, but the stream sucked – I mean suuuuucked. Constant commercials of the same thing and cutting to stock market data in the freaking middle of the fireworks.

It was objectively terrible – and also over a minute behind the actual fireworks because they had to get their stupid self-advertising in. You’d think Bloomberg would do better than a relatively small regional news network, but nope, it was horrible. That said, between the stream and the real fireworks outside we got to see a decent amount of the show, and with our window open we heard all of it. Plus, despite the stream being terrible, we still enjoyed each other’s company (and the yummy viddles). Even though the stream was behind, it was still fun to have the live fireworks outside and the steam on SB’s laptop.

Though hard to see, that’s a picture of Pig (and Pigsten) watching the fireworks!

So, not a bad 4th of July at all!

Another testament to summer was some wonderful sunflowers SB and I found near the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.

They were super upright and not bent over at all, and had a really vibrant color. Even though I’m already someone who “stops and smells the roses” so to speak, these sunflowers caught my eye to the point that I had to cross the street to look at them. 🙂

Another fun summer-esque event was the appearance of a something quite odd on top of the utility poll behind our apartment:

See it? How about a closer photo?

Yep, that’s a piece of pizza – on top of a utility pole.

And that’s how it got there, silly squirrelly! Not sure how long it was up there, it’s gone now, but it was up there for a couple of hours at least.

Aside from squirrel pizza thief, the next fun event (since studying and working aren’t really “fun” in the normal sense) after the 4th of July was going to Pleasure Bay again! We’ve been a couple times before, but this was likely our last trip to our favorite Boston-area beach. We got up early on a Sunday and headed down there, and Pigsten was pretty darn excited.

In addition to playing around a little bit in the (very) cold water, enjoying some iced coffee, and sunbathing we also made a little motte-and-bailey castle with a huge (by Pigsten size standards) pit in front of it (to throw plebs in, according to Tristen).

Pigsten also gathered up some rocks and chose the newest one for his collection.

It was a really fun day. The weather was amazing, and there were only a few lingering clouds in the sky. They are also doing construction on one of the runways at Logan Airport, so there weren’t many planes flying over Pleasure Bay (which is actually kind of weird, though I’m sure the people who nearby like it), so there wasn’t a lot of noise either. For lunch we strolled out to Castle Island to get some food from Sullivan’s and relaxed near Fort Independence.

Which in turn was kind of fitting, because the next day SB and I had planned a trip down to Quincy (another item on our Boston Bucket List)! What’s nice about Quincy, is that unlike Lexington and Concord, it’s really easy to get to via public transportation. In fact you can just hop on the Red Line and take it all the way to the center of Quincy. So that’s what we did! The subway really does pop you out right near a lot of historical sites (the stop is appropriately titled “Quincy Center”). For instance, the old town hall and new city hall are just a short jaunt from the station.

After getting our bearings and grabbing a few brochures from the NPS Visitor Center we settled in for some delicious bagels and coffee from a placed called “Gunther Tooties” – which was admittedly chosen mostly for the name (kind of like “Cooter Brown’s“).

We got really lucky and were able to join an in-progress tour (our tour guide was really good). What makes the church special is that it’s closely tied to the John Adams and John Quincy Adams, our 2nd and 6th Presidents, as well as to Reverend John Hancock – father of the John Hancock you are probably familiar with. In fact, the United First Parish Church is one of only two churches in the entire country that serves as the final resting place of a U.S. President. The other is the Washington National Cathedral in Washington D.C. where Woodrow Wilson is interred. However, the United First Parish Church has two Presidents interred within it: both John Adams and his son John Quincy (as well as both of their wives – who also feature prominently in the church’s history). Turn’s out John Quincy Adam’s birthday was the very next day, talk about timing on our part!

The crypt lies under the main entryway of the church and is actually still owned by the Adams family trust rather than the church itself. The crypt consists of two rooms, one with John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams, then the adjoining room with John Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa Adams (learning more about Abigail and Louisa – especially the relationship between the two of them, was really interesting as I knew essentially nothing about them prior to visiting).

We also got to tour the main part of the church, where we got to set in the pew that the Adams family had purchased!

It’s still an active church and the interior has been kept in amazing shape, especially the intricate roof.

Pretty much everything is original in the church.

In fact, per our tour guide pretty much the only thing that wasn’t original was the “hideous” carpet that someone “saw fit” to put down at one point, haha.

After departing from the church we headed right across the street to Hancock Cemetery, which is named after the aforementioned Reverend John Hancock.

Inside the cemetery is the Adams family tomb, which originally held all the individuals who are now under the United First Parish Church, though several family members are still interred in the tomb as well.

Of course like many really old cemeteries the town grew up around it, so Hancock Cemetery is literally right next to the Quincy City Hall and the rest of downtown. In fact this is next photo is just about 20 feet from the cemetery entrance.

After the cemetery we took a break in the shade of the Old Town Hall for a minute then started heading up towards Peacefield, a historic manor once owned by the Presidential Adams family. Along the way we passed the Quincy History Museum which looked pretty cool.

It was nice because walking around the grounds was totally free and open to the public, plus it was just SB and I and the occasional NPS volunteer.

What wasn’t nice was the fact that we couldn’t go inside the house. I have to say, I wasn’t a huge fan of how the NPS decided to structure the Quincy sites (though I’m almost always a huge fan of both historical sites and the NPS and I will gladly pay money to see them). The way they decided to do it, is rather than allow you to go to all the historical sites (Peace field, Quincy Homestead, John Adams & John Quincy Adams birthplaces, etc.) individually, you had to go to a downtown NPS location and buy a ticket there. Now, the price wasn’t bad, but it was a 2.5 hour long trolley tour with brief stops at a series of locations – and it wasn’t hop-on-hop-off, it was structured. So, say you wanted to spend more time at Peacefield, tough luck, you’re on a schedule. I don’t like being “locked in” to a rigid tour unless it’s just geographically impractical to get to the sites yourself (e.g. The Boston Light). So, if you went directly to a location, you couldn’t even buy a ticket there. You literally had to go anywhere from .5 to 1.5 miles back downtown to buy a ticket, then wait on a trolley and then have to go on a 2.5 hour restricted tour – if you didn’t do that, you couldn’t enter any of the homes.

If you’ve followed many of SB and I’s adventures you’ll know that we like to do things our own way. I’m sort of the “let me pay you money so I can walk around on my own” type. Yes, I realize most people are really shitty and have zero respect for historical sites or national parks, which is why it’s probably this way. But I just wish they would have at least let you pay for the tickets at the actual site rather than forcing you into a 2.5 hour centralized tour. I’d have gladly paid more just to go in Peacefield since we’d walked all the way there, but nope.

So that’s a rare NPS rant out of the way. Really that was my only complaint about the whole trip, other than the U.S.S. Salem being closed despite their own brochure saying it was open that is (though even the NPS employees told us that the volunteers who run the U.S.S. Salem’s museum run a very unpredictable schedule).

But the outside of Peacefield was lovely.

On our way back towards the city center we walked along a green-way which was both much prettier and had more shade than the concrete corridor we had came up on.

After returning to the center we got some much needed water and some wanted-but-not-really-needed pops and chilled for a bit in “The Galleria at Presidents Place.” While cooling off we got to watch some window washers, Tristen thought that was pretty manlies.

Once SB’s foot was rested up we set off for another cemetery – Mount Wollaston Cemetery – which we were mostly drawn to by a big granite ball in the Quincy brochure.

There were a lot of really neat graves in Mount Wollaston, including quite a few with statues.

We followed along a few of the roads (all of which were named after trees) and eventually found the big granite ball we were looking for – turn’s out it’s a grave as well.

Some cursory Google-fu on SB’s part revealed that the Kings were a wealthy family in the area – with a lot of their money coming from the granite and banking industries. I see now how a giant ball of polished granite is appropriate. In fact, Mount Wollaston has even been called a “museum to the granite industry” which makes sense having walked through it and seen many of the wonderful granite markers.

As we made our way through the cemetery I performed by “Good Taco Deed” of the day, which was fixing a broken flag and veteran marker on a grave. I don’t even know the name of the person who was buried there, but all it took was for me to notice a flag and a veteran marker (World War II) lying on the ground and I knew I couldn’t just walk away from it. The whole thing looked like it had been hit by lawnmower of something, but with some clever maneuvering (i.e. brute force) I was able to get it all back together and fixed.

After the cemetery we really changed our surroundings and headed towards a Dunkin’ Donuts. But not just any Dunkin’ Donuts, the original location – which was established in Quincy in 1950 (technically 1948 but it didn’t gain the “Dunkin’ Donuts” name until 1950). It was a hot walk along a big highway (in typical fashion I had led us – on foot – far away from the tourist areas), but it was worth it.

The original location of Dunkin’ Donuts wasn’t nearly as touristy as Starbuck’s original location was, and in fact it was fairly muted – which I liked. The interior was pretty small and had a retro design as well as plaques all over the walls:

But other than that you could probably pass it by without even knowing its significance. Whereas the original Starbucks had like 3000 people in it, the original Dunkin’ had like.. 5, and it shouldn’t be hard to know which location I preferred – even if I prefer the other’s coffee.

Once done with our second round of coffee for the day we called a Lyft (SB’s foot needed a break – she’d end up putting in around 20,000 steps – though I did 25,000 because I walk around like a 4 year old on speed at historical sites – what kind I say history excites me). Our Lyft driver took us over to a place called “Ke||y’s Cellar” – or rather he dropped us off and then we had to walk a block due to some construction confusion. Anyway, it was really good – and despite being near the tourist areas, was NOT a tourist bar at all. In fact it felt very local-ish, and since we were there in late mid-afternoon, it was pretty much just us (the tourists) and a handful of locals at the bar. That said, the bartender was really nice and our food was delicious, also we both got Samuel Adam’s Summer Ale on draft – a wonderful beer on hot day with a lot of walking!

Another exciting thing that happened during our late lunch was that I got a call to schedule a clerkship interview. The bad news is that they wanted to schedule it less than 24 hours from then (very little time to prepare for a clerkship interview) but the good news it was a phone interview and also that an interview is and interview!

After lunch we mosied our pompoush bellies back up to the T station and then made the trek home. The next day SB was back to work and I had my interview and was back to the final stretch of studying (ugh), so nothing too exciting happened for the next few days – unless you consider work, studying, and trying to prepare to move exciting that is. That week also saw me return to the law school for a meeting (like I’ve said before, the place has a way of drawing you back) and on the way there I noticed they were having some sort of outdoor lunch with live music.

To be fair I don’t even know if the lunch was associated with the law school or if it just happened to be on the law school’s campus. Either way it was a stark contrast to the usual atmosphere around the law school. I was actually fairly surprised by how active the law school was. Sure, a lot of the occupants were people from other schools, tourists, and normies – but there were still quite a few law students around. I guess a decent number of them probably work in the various clinics, etc. over the summer. That sounds objectively terrible to me, because then you’re literally at the school all year. But to each their own.

On the way back from the law school I noticed that Harvard was in the process of tearing down one of the various houses it owns.

I have no idea why they are tearing down the house as there seemed to be nothing wrong with it (I’ve walked by this house at least 600 times). I can’t remember which one it was, but one of Harvard’s various centers used to be housed there. In fairness maybe they aren’t actually tearing it down, but whatever they are doing is pretty damn substantial, especially when it was actually a pretty nice house prior to this project.

Aside from random demolitions the next exciting event was that SB and I made it to Bergamot! Bergamot is a local, farm-to-table restaurant that I think – but am not sure – is named after the bergamot orange. Bergamot was special for SB and I for a few reasons. One, it marks the completion of our “food triangle” – a feat we didn’t think would be possible until Meem stepped in. Second, it was the single most expensive restaurant SB and I have ever eaten at (though Meem paid for most of it). Third, it was the first time since things got crazy this summer that SB and I took time for a nice dinner. We’ve both been really busy lately, and as a result a lot of our Friday date-nights have been more akin to “let’s go pick up food from the market, eat it on the couch, and SB goes to sleep at 9pm” sort of nights. 😉

So, Bergamot was a special occasion – and after walking by it approximately 150 times we were finally able to join the ranks of the sweater-vest old people inside (SB and I have a running joke that every time we walk by Bergamost the patrons are 90% old people in sweaters). We showed up a little early for our 6pm reservation and other than a few people at the bar were the only people in the entire restaurant. By the time we left around 7:30 it was packed, but we got the party started – us and Pigsten that is!

Because Meem/Grandma Reem had gotten SB and I a $150! gift certificate we took it upon ourselves to “live message” Meem our dinner with Pigsten acting as the star.

While deciding what we wanted from the entirely local, all freshly-made menu, SB and I treated ourselves to some adult beverages – beer for me and wine for SB, of course! My first beer was the wonderfully titled “Rainbows and Unicorns IPA.” I’d be lying if I said I ordered it for any reason other than the name.

We then decided to start with some bread as well as some small plates of “chickpea fritters” (with whipped Ricotta and onion jam) as well as the “sweet potato raviolo” (with smoked Turkey, mole, morels, poblanos, and cotija).

After finishing those up I moved on to my second beer, “Zoe” which was much more stout than the ole’ Rainbows and Unicorns (which was calculated since I now had food in my belly).

We then progressed onto our entrees. SB went with the “crusted haddock” (with ritz crackers, yukon gold potato, ham, scapes, and red pepper fondue) while I opted for the “striped sea bass à la Plancha” (with roasted squash, pine nuts, castelvetrano, and vegetabe brodo). I have no idea what most of those words are (though I’m sure Aunt Sommelier would), but it was all DELICIOUS.

I’d never had sea bass before, and I have to say, I now know why the grey poupons like it so much – it was delectable. Both SB and I agreed that while her haddock was good, my sea bass was the star of dinner. By this point we should have stopped eating, but noooooo we just kept going with dessert and coffee.

I had the “berry crisp” (with whipped cream and oat topping) while SB ordered the “peach & almond tart” (with blueberry compote). We also had a couple of coffees – and it was right about the middle of sharing our deserts that we got ULTRA POMPOUS. My GAWD. But more on that in a second. You may have noticed the little chocolate “Congrats!” in the above photo.

Our waitress had asked us if we were celebrating anything, and we sort of realized that yes we were! Lots of recent achievements and lots of big changes coming. So when they brought us desert they surprised us with the little plate. Pigsten was a big fan.

Speaking of Pigsten, he wasn’t left out – he even got his own Pigsten-sized coconut blondie brownie.

Yeah, when they brought the bill they brought two little coconut blondie brownies with it, and we ate them. The final bill with tax and tip was $170. Meem paid for the vast majority of it, and I really only bring up price because at $170 it makes the meal the most expensive SB and I have ever consumed. But it was super yummy and we were able to complete our triangle (and support a local business). Thanks Meem!

Now, after dinner was over we had planned to make the rest of the trip up to Whole Foods to do our grocery shopping for the week. But, yeah, that didn’t happen. We were SO POMPOUS and miserable that we waddled home and plopped down on our bed for the next 1.5 hours (seriously) – Pigsten also succumbed to the pomposity.

In fact, we were so fat and miserable that I didn’t even eat any food again for the next 17 hours. That is a long time for yours truly. I really think it was the most food I’d consumed in one sitting in years, both SB and I seriously regret eating that second piece of bread, but the butter was sooooo good (it had little bits of jam in it!).

Anyways, believe it or not I actually managed to get some stuff done after the 1.5 hours of digestion, though SB didn’t really recover from her food coma until the next day. 😛

After that we had a fairly normal weekend, complete with work for SB and studying for me (we do our weekends in style these days). I guess one sort of exciting thing was that I started trying out some compression sleeves for my legs (from Amazon, also paid for by my legal research points, haha).

My Doctor – who retired literally the same day as my last appointment with her, because you just can’t top Taco – had recommended them for my varicose veins, but I’m curious to see if they help with my other issues too. Time will tell, though these aren’t the first compression-type things I’ve tried.

Oh, and we did have a couple of cool acquisitions in the Taco household over the weekend as well. For starters, we got some pretty sunflowers from Whole Foods!

After finding the sunflower outside of the school they’d been on our minds, and when SB saw them in Whole Foods the deal was sealed. Valentino was of course pretty pleased about the addition, and he’s even refrained from eating them.

Sunflowers are pretty beefy, but the stein we got in Munich is heavy enough for them.

The other addition was much less pretty, but equally exciting. Someone who moved out of our building left a fully functional Keurig in the basement. It was in desperate need of being cleaned, so we cleaned it inside and out and gave it a few test runs. It works just fine. I checked online and this model of Keurig is one of the older ones (that doesn’t use the technology that keeps you from using generic K-cups) but it’s still selling for between $110 and $125. So that’s a score in our book.

I considered trying to sell it, but we’re actually going to keep it for future use and use the refillable K-Cups (regular K-cups are oh so bad for the planet).

That weekend was also Daryl 2’s 21st birthday, and while I was obviously too far away to join the bar adventure, I did join the revelry by drinking a beer 1000 miles away.

Speaking of which, that beer, pictured in my awesome “Beer” huggie from Alaska, was really weird. It’s called “Ready Set Gose” and is brewed with salt and coriander. I didn’t notice the salt part until after I’d bought a six pack. Despite liking other offerings from Unita, this was one of my least favorite beers I’ve had in a good while as the salt is just too strong for my taste. In fairness it grew on me a little, but it’s still not one I’d go back to very often.

That said, another weird beer I got at the same time was “Wicked Watermelon” from Owl’s Brew Radler. Now what makes it weird isn’t that it’s a radler, or that it has tea, or that it has watermelon. Nope, it’s the fact that it combines all those things into one can. So it’s a beer-tea-watermelon mixture. It’s also really low in alcohol (3.8% ABV) which is common for radlers. What isn’t common is the whole tea and watermelon thing, generally its lemonade (or something similar). However, curiosity got the best of me, so I had to get some.

Curiosity killed the cat……and satisfaction brought him back.

Turns out it was pretty good. It’s very unique and hard to compare even to a normal radler. It’s kind of like an Arnold Palmer of beer, except watermelon. Lots of “excepts” with this brew, but I’d recommend it. Also you could literally drink the entire 6 pack and probably feel nothing, though that’s a lot of sugar (ah the downside of radlers, the alcohol basically never adds up, but too many and you’ve basically eaten a cake’s worth of sugar).

And speaking of sugar the weekend also brought around National Ice Cream Day (3rd Sunday of July) so we had to get ice cream – as if SB ever needs an excuse.

Stylish anti-frost oven mitt.

Pigsten is a big fan of the lemon flavors.

After the weekend we did something fun which was one of those “Escape the Room” games. I’d mentioned being interested in doing one to Meem, but I had no idea where the nearest one was located. Turns out there was one located like a 6 minute walk from the Park Street station in Boston. Meem got SB and I a gift certificate way back at Christmas, it just took us over 7 months to use it due to life.

It was pretty fun. You have an hour to escape a themed room. This involves teamwork, puzzles, more puzzles, some logical leaps (but these should be minimal – our room had one logical leap that I thought was large enough to be poor game design, to be honest), more puzzles, and probably a lot of locks. I recommend reading the “Escape the Room” link above if you are curious to learn more.

Our room was simply “The Apartment” (and boy did it look like your generic Boston apartment – good design!) and we didn’t make it out (bolding that because I own my failures) – though In fairness I think we would have made it out had we had 10-15 more seconds. We were literally on the final keypad/lock when time ran out, and we even knew the code it was just a matter of putting it in. Of course everyone says they almost made it (other than those who do, of course), but I feel like we have a factual grounding to our claim. We felt pretty good about making it to the end, even if we didn’t make it out. It was challenging! Definitely not something you can just waltz your way through. I’d definitely do another one (there are three “rooms” at this location, but tons of locations nationwide). I also think it would be really fun to be a “clue-master” for a room, similar to how I think D&D would be fun if I could just force myself to devote the time to learn how to play.

The one thing I would caution is that you really need to choose your team wisely. I don’t mean you need to pick “smart” people (and in fact I was doing some reading and “intelligence” doesn’t actually correlate to Escape Room success rates very well), but rather you need to pick people who understand it’s a game and it’s supposed to be fun. That’s the one downside to being a smaller group, is that there is a good chance you’ll end up paired with strangers (though they might end up being a blast to play with). So my suggestion is to 1) gather a group of friends/known-persons large enough to fill (or nearly fill) the available slots to a room, and 2) [Even more importantly] make sure that the people you’ve selected are actually fun to play with. If you get the 6 year old sore-loser in an adult’s body, there’s not only a decreased chance you’ll actually escape (though only like 1 in 5 groups do anyways) but there’s also decreased chance you’ll have as much fun as you should (and TBH “losing” should be just as fun as winning given the way the rooms are set up).

I sadly have no photos to share of our escape attempt, because it’s obviously against the rules to take photos (gotta keep it secret!) but I did have fun. Just seriously, choose your team wisely.

That said, if you know me IRL and want to do an Escape Room, let me know! I currently rock a 0% success rate. 😀

Also, props to SB who figured out a really cool puzzle involving the stove!

When we got back from our Escape Room we were all pretty hungry as we missed dinner while locked in the apartment. Pig, in his hunger, happened to notice a tasty-looking lady bug on the wall..

..and that began a very, very lengthy hunt. In fact it lasted well into the next day.

In fact Pig is sitting in the middle of the floor (as I type this section of the post), keeping a keen eye on the lady bug.

Actually, update, the hunt has now progressed to the windows and a second lady bug has joined the fray.

Aaaaaaand make that one lady bug again.

You’ll notice that our apartment is getting increasingly bare. In fact, since I’m writing this post in segments the apartment becomes more and more empty as the post progresses (though 90% of people still suck). Yesterday we sold my weight set (they are a pain to move – though they ended up bringing more money than anything else, even Philip) and Tristen has been kind of depressed about that (newfound lack of manries). So he’s been watching some guys working out in the heat on a roof a block over from us as a way of vicariously absorbing their manliness.

While we haven’t really been working out in the heat we have used it as an excuse to get things like matcha lemonades!

Nope, as mentioned, most of our work has involved bar studying or moving-related craziness. Speaking of which, we recently got a secondary backup external HDD. The last one we had purchased was in 2010 or 2011 when a hard drive failure almost caused me to lose 7 years worth of photos (thank you Linux for helping me save them). Now I have two-tier backup scheme, but with my upcoming move I wanted to increase that to a three-tier backup scheme. So we purchased another external HDD (thanks again LexisNexis points!), and man, they’ve really decreased in size over the past 5 years or so.

Same capacity, but way smaller. That isn’t an SSD either, just a traditional mechanical HDD.

Anyways, back to the heat. Despite Valentino’s strong protests, we haven’t been able to avoid going out in it entirely. A few days it was up around 97 here (with humidity) so it’s been pretty rough. The good news is that even though we’ve had a heatwave, it’s been accompanied by mostly awesome weather. Which sort of transitions into my next point, this is actually my first real summer in Boston. Yes, despite being here for 3 years, I’ve never actually seen this area of the country in that gap between late May and August (spoiler: it’s hot and humid). As a result, I’m seeing some things in a new way.

For instance, it’s safe to say that my walking route to the law school is deeply ingrained in my brain. In fact, I’ve told SB on more than one occasion that if you could remove traffic (an impossibility, I know) that I think I could make it to the school with a blindfold on. But alas, I’d inevitably be pwned by one of the various drivers who feels the need to go 50+ mph down a 20mph side street (roughly 75% of the drivers out here it would seem), so it’s a trial I’ll never be able to partake in. Back on topic, I know the route well. However, I needed to return to the law school to print some things and pick something up (as I’ve said, it always sucks you back) and while walking there I saw a new “side” of a tree I’ve never seen before.

I’ve walked by that tree a gojirron times and I have never seen it all fuzzy like that. So cool! Also, this is the first time I’ve been around to see all the landscaping that goes on around campus during the summer. Some of which I am not a fan of. For instance, this walkway below used to have a bunch of ferns and ivy on the right side, and for some reason they tore it up and put down ugly-ass gravel.

I felt bad for the squirrelies and birds who used to live in there. On my way back home I passed by that house I mentioned earlier (remember I’m writing this over the course of a few weeks) and I no longer think they are actually tearing it down. If they are, they are going about it in a really weird fashion.

They seem to be meticulously not removing the frame, which leads me to believe that this isn’t a full demolition scenario – but again I defer to more knowledgeable people than I.

That little law school trip (which at this point probably honestly is my last – at least for the foreseeable future) was actually on Friday the 21st, which was a memorable day for far more exciting reasons. Namely it was SB and I’s final date night in Boston. So, in order to properly celebrate we did something we don’t normally do, which is actually go into Boston-Boston for dinner. Generally speaking after a long week the prospect of leaving our immediate Cantabrigian neighborhood is quite unappealing, but this was no ordinary Friday.

After some deliberation we decided on a pub called The 21st Amendment, which is kind of a funny/well-thought-out name if you know what the 21st amendment did (it’s ok if you don’t, Taco knows that most people know much less about the U.S.C. than they claim to). It was also fitting since, you know, law school brought us here. So having our last night-out involve a pub with a legal-themed name was pretty gosh-darn fitting if I do say so myself.

What made it funny is that since this evening was sort of our preemptive “Goodbye Boston” night, it was only fitting that the Red Line be delayed. As a result, it took me about 3x as long as it should have to get down there and meet SB. Ah the T, offering up the realest of Boston goodbyes.

For food I went with their house burger while SB tried a sandwich. My burger was HUGE and delicious (Pigsten helped me eat it).

They also actually cooked it medium rare, it seems like so many places these days when I ask for medium rare they bring what is at best medium, if not medium well. The pub was divided into a bar area and a table/dining area. We ate in the bar area and up above us was a really cool (and really big) Budweiser sign.

Some day when I have disposable income (LOL) and space I’d like to collect beer stuff.

After wrapping up dinner we made our way down to Park Street Station which had to have been over 100 freaking degrees. It was awesome with a full stomach. From there we jaunted on down to Copley Square where we then made our way towards the Prudential Tower or as it is more commonly known, “The Pru.”

Here is that nice photo SB took again, this time the Pru is circled in red as if it wasn’t obvious.

One of the things on our bucket list (which dated all the way back to before the “Pre-Game” post) had been to go to the Skywalk Observatory at the Pru. We figured that going up and getting a bird’s eye view of Boston would be a good way of saying goodbye. Now, I’ve actually be up in the tower before, but that was for law school and was much less fun. However this was SB’s first time getting a lofty view of the city, aside from airplanes that is.

When we were in line to get tickets up to the 50th floor (which is where the observatory is) we saw a security robot drive by, which cracked me up after one such robot recently attempted suicide in Washington D.C.

This one was apparently more content with life as it just sorta beeped and booped around and then headed off on its merry way. After we had our tickets we headed down a floor before heading up to the 50th floor (this actually isn’t that uncommon, I think I remember having to do the same thing in at the Sear’s Willis Tower). Once up on the 50th floor we got to take in some great views – thanks it part to the aforementioned nice weather.

Originally there was a chance for rain, but the gods decided to cooperate with us (but not the T god) and as a result we got a great viewing day.

And then, finally, as you swing around to the Northwest, Cambridge enters your view.

And here it is in it’s entirety, a panorama of my home for the past 3 years.

You’ll need Eagle eyes (and good spatial awareness) to spot even the big ticket items (e.g. Harvard, MIT, etc.) and even SB and I struggled to locate the approximate area where our house is. We even paid the 50 cents for the binocular thingy, and I was almost to the point of finding our house (I found the block it was on) when the timer ran out. Oh Boston, 50 cents for like 30 seconds of magnification. What’s sad is that we had bought binoculars, but didn’t think to bring them.

Looking out over Cambridge I was reminded of the Carl Sagan quote about our Pale Blue Dot. Now, granted this is on a much, much smaller scale than our Dot, but the same concept applies. Aside from my three external internships, everything about law school – all the misery, the woe, and also the good times – had happened right down there. More than the vast majority of my non-law school life these past three years had happened right down there as well.

For instance, right down there is where SB and I first explored MIT’s campus on foot 3 years ago.

And just over there is the Longfellow Bridge, which has been under construction pretty much the entire time we’ve lived here and which we’ve crossed over a zillion times (and a few times under it – via boat, kayak, and duck). If you look closely you can even see the Red Line crossing it!

We even got to watch a few planes fly by, which is something I’ll be doing very soon on my way to the Land of Enchantment for a very un-enchanting test.

And of course this is not to mention 3 years worth of Harvard-centric stuff that happened, just click a random post on the blog for a sampling of that. 🙂

The point being, that despite being quite ready to proceed to the next chapter in our life, I couldn’t help but feel a bit melancholy looking down on our home for the past 3 years. While we’d certainly had adventures before our move out here, to say that SB and I’s life went into the “Wow” zone after arriving in Cambridge is an accurate statement. So, it’s kind of hard to leave this chapter and move to the next. Yes, onward and upward and all that, but it’s still difficult to make that first step towards a new horizon (and this coming from someone who is more than ready to make said step).

But that sentiment is kind of why we chose our final date night to go up and observe our “home.” It always amazes me how the mundane can be made extraordinary if you only take the time you change your perspective.

And we weren’t alone in our lofty-introspection. Ole’ Pigsten was with us and he was having a serious “mindblown” moment.

Of course Pigsten’s been up mountains and on airplanes, but we think this was his first time in a skyscraper. Pigsten, taking after Clifford, is a big fan of construction, digging, mining, etc. So the little fellow seemed really fascinated by being up so high, yet being able to touch the “ground.” That, or maybe Pigsten was having his own reflections on the city he has called home. 🙂

As for the other boys, they were up on the next level at the “Top of the Hub” restaurant (extremely expensive), Tristen always has to “one up” me and SB. 😛

After hanging out up there for awhile and watching the sun start to set, we decided to start making our way back home. We wanted to get a “Prudential Tower” magnet for our collection, but the observatory’s gift shop was actually pretty pathetic, it was all generic Boston tourist stuff, with hardly anything specific to the tower. I thought that was really odd, you’d think they would capitalize on that shit, all the other skyscrapers we’ve been to sure have. In fact the lack of magnet ended our “skyscraper-magnet” streak we had going. The only magnet they had that even interested us one one of an Orange Line T car, but the Orange Line is far more ancillary to us than the Red Line has been (they didn’t have a Red Line car) so we ended up with nothing. I even checked afterward to see if I could find a magnet online (which is what I had to do to get our Boston Light 300th Anniversary magnet) and found nothing.

On our way out I snapped a photo from within the Prudential Center Mall, looking up at the Prudential Tower (the very next day SB came back to teach a yoga class at the Prudential Center!).

After that we made our way back home via the bus and ended up making it to Broadway Market 12 minutes before they closed (for treats!). After that we just chilled at home for the rest of our Friday evening. I spoke to someone about buying my desk, but they ended up flaking (big surprise). The next day was back to (fairly last-minute) bar studying, and in order to fuel our brains I made us some more pancakes. This time I made us Rainier-cherry-raspberry-orange-chia-whole-wheat pancakes (a mouthful, literally and figuratively). Valentino was ultra happy.

Bar studying was kind of rough that afternoon because I was having to set on the floor to use my desktop. While I still have my desk, I had cleared everything off of it to take pictures (and also because 3 people said they wanted it, all of whom backed out, naturally) so rather than put everything back on it I’m just leaving everything on the floor. It hurts my knees, but moving everything back onto my desk is a PITA [Edit: SB later sold the desk while I was taking the bar, in case you where deeply invested in that saga for some odd reason].

One cool thing that afternoon was that Aunt Train came down to bring us pressies (one new, one old) and some beer. Once she was down we utilized the power of her car to go to a place that had been recommended to SB called “Highland Kitchen.” We hadn’t been ourselves because its sort of pain to get to on public transit, but such is the magic of a personal automobile.

Naturally we got some drinks. However I started off with something that you probably did not expect, a Zima.

Yes seriously, a Zima. If you were alive in the 90s you probably remember Zima, or, if not, I almost guarantee that some negative thought about it is locked away in your subconscious. Since I wasn’t of legal drinking age in the 90s, I never had Zima (and to be honest this wasn’t something that bothered me). However, when I saw it on the menu I knew I had to try it, just because. Turns out its part of a limited re-release that Coors did starting on July 4th, so if you have some odd hankering to have a Zima, now is your time. At Highland Kitchen they even serve it with the apparently “necessary” Jolly-Rancher which you drop into the drink for fizz + flavor. They gave me a grape jolly rancher (objectively the worst) but I used it anyways. Was it any good? I guess it wasn’t terrible. It was sort of like a Smirnoff Ice, but actually kind of better – which of course isn’t saying much.

SB for her part had a much more traditional (for us) drink, a “America’s Cup 2017” from Narragansett, which is a “Bermuda Style Pilsner” – though to be honest I have no idea what that means.

For dinner, things got even more interesting than a Zima for me. I had goat, yep goat. I mean its not that crazy, lots of places eat goat, it’s just not been normal fare in my life thus far. So, when I saw “Spicy Coconut Curried Goat Stew with Jasmine Rice and Fried Sweet Plantains” (mmm plantains) I had to go for it.

I’m glad I did. It wasn’t really spicy, at least not to me, but it was very yummy. SB had something called “Quack and Cheese” which had duck, I thought the name was pretty good.

I was able to enjoy my Zima and goat all while being watched by the stuffed rooster above our table.

Eventually I normalized things a bit and returned to standard beer, with a new (to me) variety called “Ur-Pils” which is an organic beer from Pinkus Müller.

For dessert we had some coffees and a delicious caramel vanilla bread pudding.

It was a good dinner with good drinks and good company!

And also goat.

Once Aunt Train had returned us to our apartment we settled in for the evening. Which brings me back to our pressies. First up, a “Himalayan Salt Lamp,” but this wasn’t actually a new present. Nope, my Dad and Stepmon got this thing for us over 2.5 years ago at Christmas. Of course it’s heavy and we can’t really fly with it, so it ended up voyaging out here with the family when they came to visit for Thanksgiving the year after that Christmas. And, also due to weight, there it sat until July 22, 2017. So it took us from December 24th, 2014 until July 22, 2017 to get it home, but we did, thanks to a lot of assistance along the way. The boys enjoyed the lamp quite a bit.

The new pressie from is from Aunt Train herself comes all the way from Afghanistan. It’s a chessboard made of jade and lapis lazuli.

One of these things is not like the others.

It’s really awesome. I like chess, I’m not great at it, but I like playing it. I have a standard fare chessboard, but until this acquisition I’ve had nothing super fancy. My dad has a really awesome Civil War chess-set but I’ve not had anyplace to set out a nice set like that. So now I have a nice set, but I’m still working on the place to put it. I really like the colors on it. To be truthfully honest, if it wasn’t for an obscene amount of hours logged in Minecraft I probably would have never heard of lapis lazuli. So to actually have something made of it is really neat. The board is also really, really heavy, so it can double as a home defense instrument if necessary.

After examining our pressies I played a video game with a friend until like 3am. It’s probably the last time I’ll be able to do that for awhile since I don’t even know what’s happening with shipping my computer right now. So while I probably shouldn’t have stayed up that late this close to the bar, it was the first time we’d played games in about a month, and might be the last time in months, so no regrets.

And that, dear friends, brings us up to today. Today is melancholy for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I had what is probably my last piece of cake from Broadway Market.

Pig and Pigsten “helped” of course!

But more profoundly, it’s also the day before I leave for the bar exam. I have a lot I need to do today, but instead I’m blogging. 🙂

But in seriousness I do need to go get some things done, and plus this post still needs to be edited (believe it or not I actually do edit these posts! …sort of). So, since I’m at nearly 11,300 words I think I’ll call it a day.

When this gets posted, if everything has gone correctly I’ll be in a Penske driving across the country (again). I’ll also have finished the bar exam (praise baby Jesus) and who knows what else will have happened, I’ve seriously learned that plinko is hard to predict, so I don’t dabble much in prediction-ry these days, and instead focus on doing (especially on those things I’ve been told can’t be done). I’ll post about all of that eventually, but rest assured that Dinosaur Bear will be back after a summer interlude.

This Post-Game post was written over the course of July 5th to July 23rd, 2017 [Edit: with the final edits made on July 29th in Baltimore while on my way back to Boston] and has a whopping 110 photos, I hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Welcome to Dinosaur Bear! This is going to be a short post (yes, an actual short post from Taco, believe it or not!). Basically I just wanted to post that I have no idea when I’ll be posting next (lol). Well, actually that isn’t true, but more on that in just a second.

I’m getting ready to go through a bunch of changes. The bar exam, job interview(s?), moving (déjà vu), moving again, starting a post-doc program (in another country), and so on and so forth. There are a lot of unknowns in this process which means that I have no real firm timeline on a lot of things (for instance, as of right now I still don’t have a place to live abroad). As such, I don’t know when I’ll have a time to make another Dinosaur Bear post, but rest assured I’ll definitely be generating content for that post whenever it does come.

In fact, on the day this gets posted I’ll be on my way to take the bar exam, which is effectively the beginning of my “blog blackout” period that could last upwards of a month (or longer). However, have no fear, I can guarantee at least one post in the interim. It’s going to be my “Boston Post-Game” post, which, unsurprisingly, covers pretty much the exact opposite of my “Boston Pre-Game” post from (what seems like) a lifetime ago, and is the third subject I talked about posting here.

That next post (which is a doozy, as it covers everything that happened from New Orleans to me leaving for the bar exam) should drop on August 1st and give you something to chew on until I get around to posting about the bar exam, moving, and really starting what is by most accounts a practically new life.

Anyways, if you still can’t believe that I’d write something this short (e.g. a normal sane-person type of post) then I suggest perusing some of the Dinosaur Bear archives. You can either just do a random search (see here if you are confused by wizardry), or go with some of the following suggestions by some people who appear on the blog regularly. I asked Meem and SB to pick a post they really liked (they both ended up choosing two), whereas I asked the Boys to pick some older posts that they thought didn’t get enough traffic or were just silly. I also tossed in a personal pick which I haven’t referenced in awhile and need to follow up on someday (plus a bonus full of some silliness).

Goodness, a lot has transpired since Pig’s Birthday! I just got back from my first trip to the dentist in 3.5 years (and likely last for a few more years) so I figured I’d try to catch up on my blog. It’s kind of a given that my posting game-plan isn’t really going to work out, at least not how I intended it to. So, I figured I’d just lump a bunch of stuff together into a “Spring 2017” post. I guess spring doesn’t technically end until June 21st, but I can always come back and change the title of this post to “Spring 2017 Part 1” if the need arises.

Anyways, as a brief overview of what I’ll be covering today: I’m done* with law school (though not yet graduated), it’s spring, our spring has been mostly cold and rainy so far, Easter happened, Meem visited, I finished my exams/project/paper, and am in the first stages of studying for the bar (in fact I should have started on Monday). I won’t really be covering things in that order, that just so happens to be the order I thought of them.

*done in the sense that I am done with everything I know about – RA or journal work could lurk behind any corner.

Since then, a lot has changed. For one, spring has gotten well.. ok nothing has really changed on that front. It’s just about as cold and rainy as it was over a month ago. Yay May. However, that has not stopped the industrious Pigsten from continuously acquiring more rocks for his collection.

Winter activities which gave way to early spring activities have now yielded to mid-spring croquet (but not roque, thankfully) fields in the Science Center Plaza.

Sure, I was mostly inside double-fisting coffee as deadlines loomed…

…but at least the view of the outside world was nice!

Until it wasn’t:

Yes, it has been a very cold and rainy spring thus far. Heck just a few nights ago (in May) it got down to nearly freezing. That said, the plant buddies have not been too disgruntled about it, Quixote especially has gone a little grow-crazy.

I haven’t done quite as well as the plants. Part of the problem stems from the fact that I have this weird issue when it rains. Actually, I have this weird issue when it drizzles. Basically, if a single raindrop falls someone in a 1 mile radius of me, my pant legs get soaked. No, more specifically, ONE of my pant legs gets soaked. Here’s a good reference picture. Yes, I’ve gotten so annoyed by this I took a photo of my jeans.

First of all. It wasn’t really raining, that was from sprinkling. Yes, sprinkling did that to my left pant leg. Second, it’s not rain dripping off my umbrella due to the angle I hold it. I’ve tested this extensively, plus it happens without an umbrella. So, it has something to do with my gait. Changing your gait in the short term isn’t too hard, but trying doing it for a mile+ straight – it’s easy to revert to the natural way you walk, especially when your body gives you no indication that anything is wrong (like pain). I’ve found that if I walk like a morbidly obese clown-pigeon and purposefully swing my legs out like a cowboy trying to mount hippopotamus that I can somewhat avoid it, but holly hell, it’s annoying. Once I had a client meeting and it was actually raining, not sprinkling. my dress pants looked like I’d dipped one of them into the tub before setting out. It was great. It’s added layer of additional frustration to rainy days for me.

But I digress, yet speaking of fancy things like dress pants – I had my “formal” public interest student closing event at Harvard. Each year the Office of Public Interest Advising has a formal event for students going into public interest work, it’s basically the only fancy closed-door dinner that most of such students will get (either for graduation or otherwise). Or, as one guest put it “This is the kind of dinner you’d have each week if you’d gone to a firm.” What made it especially swanky was that it was held at the Harvard Faculty Club, a building that I had passed by many times but never (been allowed to) entered.

The event overlapped a bit with my Thursday evening class, so I had to bop out of that a bit early and head over. The dinner was pretty nice. It started with free booze, then a surprisingly painless group photo (family photos are infinitely worse), followed by a fancy dinner. Our seating was random, or maybe it wasn’t, but it appeared random to us. I ended up sitting right next to HLS’s Dean, Martha Minow, who is stepping down as Dean after this semester (which also happens to be HLS’s 200th anniversary. Harvard itself is 381 years old in case you were wondering, the law school didn’t exist as an independent entity until 1817). I also got to attend her “last lecture” later on. Anyways, dinner was nice and considered of a several course meal. Valentino conveniently showed up right around the time the fish came out.

He stayed for the berry dessert too, of course. In addition to food and booze (though they never brought me coffee, still bitter about that) there were a few “set” speeches, but then they just opened the mic up to public interest students. It was pretty cool – though I still like to limit my social gatherings. 🙂

Another nifty thing that happened is Easter! We normally try to do something for the Boys and this year was no exception. As we don’t have a lot of money to spend on basket things (nor do we think its necessary) we decided to spice things up a little this year by constructing a little trail of chocolate “eggs” to the Easter Basket. It should be no surprise that Pigsten discovered the first “egg.”

From there Pig honed in on something different around the Yoga corner – an area he is very familiar with.

Valentino was next, with an “egg” hidden behind our TV.

Tristen and Pigsten then used their T-Rex senses to tag-team against a “regg” hidden in some papers on the printer.

Pigsten then hopped over to my office chair (the boy can jump) and noticed something:

Pig sealed the deal, finding the “egg” on a bottle of pills [no pills were consumed].

Next Pigsten found one on top of the paper shredder – yea, though it might appear dangerous, that shredder has been broken for quite some time and no one really knows why we still have it.

From there Valentino took us into the hallway.

Tristen, not one to be left behind, spotted the next “regg” near the bedroom door.

Pigsten was quick to jump back on the trail at that point.

Pig joined the final-stretch fray as well.

Soon enough, the Boys were at the last “regg.”

And from there they dived into their basket to find more treats – this after eating all the “reggs” they’d found of course.

Their basket consisted of cookies and coffee, neither of which lasted very long.

While they didn’t arrive on Easter the Boys also got some pressies from Grandma Reem’ in the form of some Alternative U.S. National Park Service stickers! They were very excited.

Unfortunately that was the end of super exciting things, at least for a little while. We then headed into the end of semester craziness which was sorted of foreshadowed in list form here. There were two cool things about the end of classes though. First, SB got to come to my second to last class, Mediation, which she – I – and the professor really enjoyed (given SB’s profession). Second, my last class at Harvard Law took place in the same building – Austin Hall (though sadly not same room, though it was the room right next to it) as my first “class” during orientation (lol at my first mention of orientation being in the middle of a Beer Blurb, quite fitting – though in fairness I also discuss it here). After class some people from my Section had a champagne toast, it was cold and rainy, but that didn’t dampen our spirits, or the actual spirits.

So those things were nifty, especially the SB visit. It had been since 2012 that we had last sat in a classroom together for the purposes of learning.

Of course the end of classes does not mean the end of projects, plus it also only signifies the start of exams. So, what is a not-so-little-ole’ Taco to do? Go get beer, immediately.

Lots of beer, continuous beer.

In law school: Not even your beer can escape the fact that you are in law school.

And then comes studying. Whether or not “studying” means studying the law, or reading out of our Gravity Galls journal is a matter of debate.

Eventually though I had to burn the midnight oil, or rather, midnight candle. Which also meant that I had to watch Pigsten – the boy is oddly obsessed with flinging himself into open flames (maybe he is Zoroastrian?).

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a “crammer” – a style which doesn’t work as well in law school as it does elsewhere. That said, it hasn’t stopped me from finishing things like outlines the night before a closed morning exam, and this was no exception.

But hey, like I said – beer.

The next day, after my first exam (4.5 hours long) I was wondering around the law school and found some signage about all the stress relief stuff going on. You know, I’ve never actually used any of these services (not even the massage, shocking, until you remember how anti-social I am), but it’s nice to know they exist.

The good news was that I only had two exams this semester. One, in-class, closed, 4.5 hour exam – and one take-home, open, 12 hour exam. The in-class exam was for Federal Courts and the Federal System, which was just about as exciting as it sounds (and also quite difficult to boot). The take-home exam was for First Amendment, which is currently being erased by Cheeto Benito, so joke’s on me for taking that one. Anyways, “Fed Courts” was – along with my ever lingering group project – to be the hardest point in my exam period, so it was nice having that over first. Plus, I was even further ahead than I thought I would be because I had experienced a weird super-Taco period of focus the prior weekend and had managed to nearly finish my research paper for another class. Which was awesome, as that brought me down to: Detail work on said research paper, unknown amount of work on a group project (turned out to be a lot), misc. RA & journal work (see top of post), and one 12 hour exam before I was done, and the more I got done sooner, the better!

Why the rush? Well obviously it’s better to be done than not done, but more specifically, Meem was coming to visit! In fact, Meem arrived the night of the same day I took my Fed Courts exam, so I switched into law school “off” mode for a few days in the middle of the exam period, which caused my inbox to inflate to 87 unread messages, but I didn’t care (truth be told a lot of those are now deleted without ever having been read). Meem’s flight got delayed, but we still managed to be in bed by 1am, which is good for us, especially since SB had work the next day.

I also had a morning meeting on campus the next day, so Meem followed me to campus and did a self-tour. After I was out of my meeting I took her to some of the places she hadn’t been able to see before, such as the Ames Courtroom:

As well as the inside of Langdell Hall (law school library). It was technically exam period and you’re not supposed to have guests, so it was mostly us walking in silence to the few places where you can talk, but I think Meem still got some good photos.

We also noticed that the fountain in the Science Center Plaza had finally been activated! After 3.5 years of wondering and waiting, the fountain was on! We had never seen it on before – ever. In fact, “long” ago while searching to see if it even was a fountain, I found out that it has a name – Tanner Fountain – though I couldn’t find any evidence as to why it hadn’t been turned on in at least 3.5 years. Other than the mention of needing “some significant restoration” in a Harvard Gazette article, I could find nothing. So, coupled with recent renovations to the Science Center itself, I’m guessing they finally finished these restorations (though I never visibly saw them working on the fountain). Either way, it’s alive again, and hopefully it lasts through the summer!

I was so excited I had to text this photo SB at work.

Now, as excited as I was about the fountain, the big event of the day was going to see the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees at Fenway Park! SB and I hadn’t done this – and to not do so seems kind of like a failure for someone who lives in the Boston area America. SB had been to like 45 billion MLB games before, I’d been to one, and Meem to none. The Boys got a private clubhouse courtesy of Clifford, but Pigsten decided to go “slumming” with us common folk down in the Loge Boxes, which turned out to be really good seats – courtesy of Meem!

Pigsten enjoying some pre-game popcorn!

While the weather hadn’t been great, it was “decent” that day, in that – while cold – it didn’t rain at least. The worst part was when the sun initially went down and the wind kind of picked up, but after awhile (maybe it was those $10 beers?) it wasn’t too bad. At the very least it wasn’t too much for Pigsten, and, like Tristen, he is cold-sensitive.

As mentioned we had pretty good seats, here is a no-zoom panorama of where we were at. Meem got some better photos with her real camera, but you get the basic idea.

As for the game itself, the Red Sox lost, and not only did they lose, they didn’t score once. Plus, the Yankees – who obviously won – didn’t hit a home run. So it wasn’t really the most exciting game of baseball, even by baseball standards – which are like, in the same realm as “paint drying” 90% of the time. HOWEVER, it wasn’t really about the game, as much as the experience of going to Fenway (oldest MLB ballpark) to see the Red Sox against the Yankees. Or, as I put it, “When the Sox and the Yankees play the winner is always… America.”

So, all that considered, it was a great time with mah peeps. I think we all enjoyed it. I don’t know if Pigsten even knows what baseball is, but he liked the popcorn AND because we were Fenway newblets we all got little “Fan Packs” which included Fenway Dirt – yes, though they were technically for SB and I, the bags are now Pigsten’s.

Of course he let Grandma Reem’ keep her dirt, cause Grandma Reem’.

The GOSOX Citgo Sign (it’s a special sign) sticker technically didn’t come in our newb packs, but since I found it on the ground in Fenway it’s kind of like the Park wanted me to have it anyways.

So that was our cool sports experience. SB and I probably would have done it even if Meem hadn’t been able to come out. But we definitely wouldn’t have had as good of seats, nor would Meem have been there, so it was a lot better this way.

Speaking of other cool sports experiences, HLS has its own box at TD Garden and they were offering Celtics playoff tickets for said box…

…but I didn’t take them (I can hear the distant anal clenches from Daryl 2), because 1 – I’d already seen the Celtics, and 2 – the tickets were still $65 a piece. Definitely not bad for box tickets to an NBA playoff game, but still more than the $10 per ticket I paid Harvard for the pleb tickets the first time around.

But back on the Meem visit front, in addition to going out and about we also had a few nights in where we made things such as a salmon dinner (much to Valentino’s great pleasure) as well as chocolate avocado cake (don’t knock it until you try it). We also broke out some cards and board game. Now, this isn’t just any ole’ board game – this is a board which spent a good deal of its existence banned from production.

Yes, Ghettopoly, a game which involves “buying stolen properties, pimpin’ hoes, building crack houses and projects, paying protection fees and getting car jacked are some of the elements of the game. Not dope enough?…If you don’t have the money that you owe to the loan shark you might just land yourself in da’ Emergency Room.” Truth be told, I’ve had this game (courtesy of Meem) for years. In fact I don’t know how long I’ve had it, but Wikipedia says it came out in 2003, so based on subsequent lawsuits my guess is that it wasn’t long after that. That said, I’ve never actually played it. For one, “Ghettopoly” isn’t really the kind of Monopoly you bust out with new friends, or most people for that matter. So it’s kind of a niche version of a definitely-not-niche game. However, Tristen had been begging to play it for years, so it seemed fitting to bust it out when Grandma Meem was out. It was fun, though arguably more difficult than standard Monopoly due to increased penalties (the cost of the “Emergency Room,” for instance, is 250% higher than “Jail.”). It was a heated Ghettopoly bout, with SB taking an early lead, but I pompified and ended up winning in the end (the Boys were on my side and Pigsten probably ate some money in the process, I mean literally ate it).

The next day we all went out for a walking tour of parts of Cambridge. Meem wanted to see Tory Row, so we took off in that direction to start. However, on the way we took a peak inside Memorial Hall since Meem had never been in, and while Sanders Theatre and Anneberg Hall were closed off to visitors (as usual) we did get to see the main chamber with zero people in it – not a common occurrence given Harvard’s status as a tourist attraction.

After Meem took a peek into Anneberg Hall (it was lunch time for the babies) we headed down into Loker Commons (basement) and then on to Tory Row. While I’ve been up Tory Row at least three times before, one thing I had not done was explore Longfellow House – the longtime home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and before that the headquarters for General George Washington from 1775-76.

The interior wasn’t open for the season yet, but the front gate to the grounds were open, so we meandered around a bit. Meem saw a sign for the gardens and headed straight for it, turns out Longfellow House is “hiding” a very nice little garden area behind it next to the Carriage House. It wasn’t the nicest of days, but a lot of the flowers were in bloom in spite of the lackluster spring weather, so it was still pretty.

Despite having some classes with business school students, doing HBX CORe, and just generally not living that far away from it – I’d never been to the business school (though I’d spent many nights standing at their edge of their campus waiting for a bus after football or hockey games). So this was a first for all of us.

They have quite a nice campus, and some of the trees were bloom which made it even nicer.

The inside of Spangler Center and Bloomberg Center (yep those Bloombergs) was really nice, and had some similar design features to the law school’s Wasserstein Hall, which I guess isn’t totally surprising.

After we were done being B-school tourists (so I’ve now seen the medical school and business school – maybe I’ll see the law school someday) we moseyed over to the Harvard Stadium – which, not only were the grounds unlocked, the stadium itself was open, which was a nice surprise. Naturally I did what any normal person would do and immediately tried to figure out how to get the normally-sealed-off roof of the coliseum stadium. Unfortunately someone had predicted my endeavor and shut me down by chaining and padlocking the only way to the roof (absent flight or Spider-Man abilities).

This was as close as I could get.

The next logical step was to go play on the field, duh. So we did.

We even got some photos of me, me+SB, and me+Meem, right on the 50 yard line, they will come in handy should I ever need to lie about being an Ivy League Football Player.

After that we proceeded back over into Cambridge where we engaged what has quickly become a visiting family tradition: Legal Sea Foods.

Ever since SB, Meem, and I ate here back in the before times, we’ve ate here with nearly every round of family that has visited – though oddly enough never on our own (we stick to things like poor people fish in cardboard boxes). It’s really yummy – obviously – or we wouldn’t keep going back. This time around I mixed things up a bit by getting the lobster bisque rather than the clam chowder.

Of course that is just a way of saying that I also got clam chowder by eating some of SB’s. Both were delicious. For the main course I had (more) beer + scallops. I love scallops, though rarely get them due to cost. Paired with my scallops were mushrooms with rivaled Little Zagreb’s as well as a crispy risotto cake, which was as good as it sounds.

After our delicious late lunch, we headed up into the northern part of Harvard Yard to show Meem the place where half the world’s wealth will descend the first part of my graduation will take place (as of this getting posted – in just 13 days!). Meem took lots of photos of the buildings she hadn’t seen, I took a photo of a squirrel.

All was well in the world.

Sadly, all good things must end, and the next morning Meem had to fly back home, SB had to go to work, and I had to return to school. The Boys were upset Grandma Reem’ had to leave, though they were all happy with their pressies from her:

Tristen obtained a Harvard Law gavel, and immediately proceeded to beat the piss out of everyone with it until Grandma Reem’ intervened – he’s been good since (though Valentino took up the whacking work for awhile [don’t ask about his wrist slapper, JFC] – Grandma Reem’ shut that down as well). Pig obtained a wood carving of Ganesha that he now meditates and does yoga with. Valentino got a Harvard Law School snowflake ornament. Between the two of us, I don’t think he cares about the HLS part, he just loves ornaments and snowflakes. And, not to be forgotten, Pigsten got his aforementioned Fenway Dirt (two bags, no less). Good grandma Reem’ pressies all around.

Once Meem was on her way and SB at work, I set about the bloody business of the day, which happened to involve wrapping up my research paper for good, trying to wrap up my group project (silly me), and studying for the 12 hour exam I had the following day. I accomplished two of those three things, if you guessed the group project was not one of them, then you are someone who is familiar with collegiate group projects – as well as right. Nah, that group project would extend would extend itself to the literal final hours of the formal semester for 3Ls. As reference, per our team agreement it was supposed to have been done over two weeks prior – but, well, again group projects, if you understand, you understand. The good news is that a few of us managed to pull it all together, while simultaneously throwing the other team members under the bus (as they deserved, long story, just trust me) so it was still in on time. So it was productive last week.

Though oddly, my end* to law school (see italic note at the top of the post) was not the BANG I expected. But rather, law school sort of went out as silently as any huge life milestone conceivably might. But that is for a future post wherein I will discuss being done with Harvard Law School – this post is more about the lead-up. Plus, to make things even more anti-climatic, I went from submitting my last assignment, straight into an optometrist appointment where I was told they’d need to dilate my eyes (they did not tell me about this beforehand) in order to check up on a potential optic-nerve condition I am at risk for developing (I’m still a-ok, for reference!). So, not knowing this was coming, I had no sunglasses, so I got to rock those shitty roll up sunglasses they give you through CVS, Harvard Square, and Harvard Yard. Actually I couldn’t care less about the appearance, it just sucked being unable to read or use my computer for like 5 hours after being done with law school. It was also pouring rain, like pouring, so SB just brought food home rather than us going out. WOO Taco knows how to celebrate em.’

So, as has become a sort of Dinosaur Bear tradition (see 1L & 2L) here is picture of one of the Boys next to my stack of materials for the semester – which, as usual, does not include casebooks or the 80 F*CKING MILLION PAGES from my group project class. 🙂

Yes that little itty-bitty booklet thing on top is the United States Constitution, yep, that thing you like you pretend you’ve read (or maybe that was just me). Look how teeny it is, seriously go read it.

So, that brings us up to the present! If you were wondering about my first dentist appointment in 3.5 years, no – it had nothing to do with the fact that last time I was in an office it involved having my wisdom teeth removed and anesthetics not working and having one tooth drilled out without pain medicine (I recommend it, loads of fun). To be fair, that was technically the second to last time, as the last time was a follow up. Anyways, no, I’m not scared of dentists, I just don’t really think I need to go to them as frequently as they say I do. Sure 3.5 years is a stretch, but I have no dental insurance. Rather, the dentist was rather just a “catch up” I’ve been doing post law school exams. I also went to (as mentioned) the optometrist for a checkup (my eyes didn’t get worse during law school!) and my general practitioner for a checkup. You know, the whole “not dying” sort of stuff that you don’t do during law school.

Outside from that I’ve also being working quite extensively on what comes next, as well as starting (e.g. being really behind on) to study for the bar, but those are topics for another post, which will come at some point after I close out law school, be it via one combined Graduation + “Muh Feels” post, or two independent posts. We’ll see how I feel, though it will probably be two posts because, I’m also taking a quick trip to New Orleans after graduation as my version of a super-mini (drastically preemptive) bar trip (as comparison SB got to all the way to the frickin’ arctic circle when she graduated – and she doesn’t have to deal with the bar 😛 ).

Aight’ – I think that’s all I have for now. See you on the flip side o’ graduation. Also Dinosaur Bear is almost 5 years old – and it’s almost my birthday as well. Dat’s crazy.

I have returned after a not-so-extended absence (thanks to scheduled posting) to both the blog and to Boston.

As mentioned, I’ve been traveling since.. well pretty much right after I returned from Montana. So, I’m just now settling back into things after getting through my first week of 3L. I also returned to Boston from Alaska just in time to ride out the aftereffects of Hermine (though in fairness it really only brought humidity, gray skies, and rain to Boston and none of the really nasty stuff). So I’ve had the pleasure of walking to school with oppressive humidity and rain for the first week of classes, always a nice start to the dismal bright and joyous law school experience.

Anyways, unlike my previousiterations of Boston Groove I really don’t have much to say about being back in Boston per se, other than to say that I am back in Boston and will be here without exception until October – but more on that in October. Instead I just want to do a bit of housekeeping for Dinosaur Bear and let you know what is in the proverbial post pipeline (but not the bad kind of pipeline). First, I will obviously have to share my voyage to the hinterlands, and then I’ll want to do a “start of 3L” post as well, and then I’ll return to regular(ish) scheduled posts.

So, for the Alaska posts, I’m going to be busting it up into four separate portions which will roughly equate to the flow of the trip itself. First, I’ll discuss the driving portion. Second, I’ll discuss our trip to the Arctic Circle (polar bears!). Third, I’ll discuss our train trip and cruise. Fourth, I’ll discuss the voyage home and then reflect on the trip as whole. However, if you are expecting some extremely grand Taco tale of New Mexico proportions, then I’m afraid to say you’ll be disappointed. In the interest of time (of which I have little, more on that in the 3L post) I’m going to be erring well on the side of brevity in my Alaska posts and instead of giving a play-by-play of the trip (which is admittedly my usual style) I’m just going to focus on the “flavor” of each portion. I mainly do this to allow me to keep my own sanity and not write 4 20,000 word long posts which we both know I might otherwise do. I have some limitations in my head and they are on the more restrictive side, but I’m not going to share them here since when I do I tend to break them anyways. 😛

The 3L post will be me complaining about law school, so nothing new there. 🙂

Of course I can’t say when these posts will start, but the goal is to get them out decently soon. So with that said, look for Dinosaur Bear to clog up your inbox again, at least if you are subscribed:

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..and if you aren’t, then you can sleep easier knowing that Dinosaur Bear will be adding an infinitesimal amount of data to the leviathan that is the interwebs once again.

This post is going to be more of an outdoorsy slide-show than a traditional e-journal, so let’s get started!

This past weekend I walked, and I mean walked. In fact, I walked more this past weekend than I had ever walked in any previous weekend in my life and on Saturday I walked more in a single day than I ever had on any other day in my life. All in all I walked 63.69 miles. Not only that, a lot of this walking wasn’t just ordinary walking, no, the vast majority of it was hiking, inclusive of several thousand feet of elevation gain. There was also a good bit of running thrown in for good measure. Looking back, I actually had no idea just how much walking I was going to be doing.

Friday was a rather ordinary day, I ran, I worked, I went grocery shopping, I talked to SB, the usual. On Friday I logged about 7.83 miles.

Saturday started normally enough.

After waking up the sleepy dinosaur I went for my Saturday run, and I got closer to the mountains than I ever had before.

To be honest I’m not sure I’ll make it much closer than that.

While running my sunglasses just sort of fell apart.

Yep, I was just strolling along and suddenly I was faced with sunglasses-disintegration. They are the second pair of sunglasses to break; the first broke while climbing Sacagawea. I was able to repair them, but they later broke again, and then I repaired them again – it’s the circle of sunglasses life.

The plan for Saturday was to be chill and just do some of the in-town trails. I was planning a big hike on Sunday and didn’t want to go too crazy on Saturday. So Tristen and I headed to Peet’s Hillto get started – we were actually going to be walking a lot of the areas that Meem had walked while she was out visiting us.

Peet’s Hill is exactly what is sounds like, it’s a hill/ridge in Bozeman with a decent little trail network on it.

It’s popular with walkers, hikers (there is a difference trust me), bikers, and dog-people. Of all the groups dog-people are by far the most annoying. While Peet’s Hill isn’t really arduous, a couple of the paths do have some decent elevation gain.

Once up on the ridge you get some nice views of Bozeman and the surrounding mountains.

Facing north (my house is that way).

There are some benches along the way and popular opinion is that Peet’s Hill offers the best sunset views in the entire Bozeman city area.

The whole ridge is about 1 mile long.

Facing south.

Peet’s Hill is actually housed inside of Burke Park, though to be honest I’ve never heard anyone refer to the area as anything other than Peet’s Hill.

I had originally planned just to walk the hill area and then drive down to another in-town trail called the Sourdough Trail, however, me being me, I decided to walk all the way down there instead, so I set off on a little spur trail on the south side of Peet’s Hill.

This led me down to a little trail next to a road, which I followed for a bit.

This in turn led to a bigger road, with no real “trail” per-se, but sidewalks are sort of like trails if you pretend.

Here you can see the the hill area I’d just come from:

I passed a golf course as well. I don’t really golf but this seemed like a nice one.

I then headed down “Fairway” road, which is so-titled because it’s right next to the golf course. It’s in a little burb area, so there is no trail – or no sidewalks here – but on the town-trail map I had (that Meem bought and was nice enough to leave behind for me) it showed Fairway as a connector route.

It was very wonder bread.

As I was walking down the road (with old people in golf clothes staring at me like I was psychopath playing Pokemon Go – which I don’t) I actually missed the offshoot to the trail. Fortunately I checked my phone and I’d only passed it by like 25 feet.

It was just kind of tucked in between two properties with no real signage on the street itself.

Once on the Sourdough Trail you get into a nice little wooded area very quickly.

I even saw a deer friend.

Of course once you are through the first portion, you come out in an even nicer little burb area.

Here you sort of just walk by all the burb houses for a bit until you “reconnect” with the trail.

And, again, it doesn’t take long to leave burbia behind – or at least feel like you have, houses are never very far away.

The trail crosses over Sourdough Creek more than once.

These crossings range from little boardwalks to full-fledged bridges, such as Riley’s Bridge.

The creek itself gets a bit bigger as you move further south.

Which would make sense according to this sign given that the headwaters are to the south in the Gallatin Range:

The trail sort of just follows along the edge of the creek and there is a meadow just on the other side.

While you’re never really “out” of civilization, it’s still a nice “little” (it’s not actually that little) recreational/wooded area.

If you lived nearby it would be a great spot for running, picnics, etc.

After coming to the southern end of the trail, I looped back up around in a different direction.

This brought me back into burbia.

In many places the trail was literally right through people’s backyards.

There were some gates through this area that I thought were pretty cool, of course they were more art than functional gate.

While I liked some of the houses, it felt kind weird just casually strolling through people’s yards. But no one seemed to mind now that I was away from the golf course crowd.

This portion of the trail passed through some cool Aspen groves. It still boggles my mind that Aspen groves are just one giant living organism, not separate trees.

This trail just kind ploughs through the middle of Bozeman, but in a few spots you’d have no idea you were in the middle of a city.

Like the other trails it skirts several backyards and one nice apartment complex had a pound with ducky friends living at it.

After walking on the Gallagator for a bit, I sort of completed my large “loop” and reunited with Moose II at the base of Peet’s Hill.

Tristen and I were ready for some food!

So we stopped by the store real quick, and then headed home for the day. I’d ended up walking much more than I intended to, and on Saturday I clocked in at 20.20 miles – which was definitely more than intended, but not enough to break my record from Santa Fe.

Sunday would shatter the record.

The day started early, as my Sunday mornings tend to do out here.

I knew I was in for quite a hike (though I didn’t realize just how big of a hike it was actually going to be) so we had a nice high-protein breakfast.

Then we got all our gear packed up. In fact I needed enough stuff for this hike that I busted out my REI backpack rather than my little day pack. It was the first time I’ve used the REI backpack (it’s technically a “travel pack”) for hiking and it was so, so much nicer than my day pack.

Then we loaded up into Moose II and hit the road.

Our destination was Hyalite Canyon. Well, technically it was Hyalite Peak, but you have to go to the canyon first. Here is an ok map of the canyon area that showcases some of the more major features:

So, given our destination, we naturally we branched off the highway and got onto the aptly named Hyalite Canyon Road.

Since we’d been pretty expeditious on time – we’d gotten to the trailhead at 10am and the trailhead is roughly an hour’s drive from my house – we were actually able to find a parking spot that didn’t require parking ¼ a mile away.

After taking a quick wee-break (the first of many rustic wees that would be had that day) we hit the trail.

At first I wasn’t even sure I was on the right trail, because it looked more like a road than a trail.

But pretty soon it narrowed and left all its road traits behind, and from there things started to get very peaceful.

This first little stretch of the trail was mostly in a cool (temperature) wooded area, I was actually fairly chilly at this point.

There were a few open areas though.

As this wasn’t that far from the trail head, there were even a few benches and picnic tables scattered around.

Grotto falls is one of 11 – yes, eleven – waterfalls that the Hyalite Canyon Trail passes by. Here is a map that shows the major ones, a few of the more minor – or more distant from the trail – falls are excluded.

Grotto Falls is so called because of well.. that big grotto right next to it. Grotto Falls is also the furthest one can go on the “easy” portion of the trail. In fact, there is a separate handicap accessible (though in my opinion it pushes the limits of such a term) that goes straight to Grotto Falls, whereas you have to temporarily branch off the Hyalite Trail to get to them. The result is that the area was pretty busy. I struggled to get that above shot without the hallmark Asian tourists in it. Heck, there was even a big school group in the area that I (thank God) narrowly avoided.

After retreating away from the people like Gollum I descended back up into the forest and resumed my hike.

The trail was still “busy” in this area, but far less so than the Grotto Falls area. I actually spoke to the two people in this photo for a few minutes; all of us had the goal of making it to the summit. Oddly enough I’d meet them again about 7 hours later.

As you progressed along the trail the 11 waterfalls – which generally required a brief venture down a spur trail – were usually well marked.

I just sort of took distant photos of the first few falls, as it was still close enough to the trailhead that people were present. Generally speaking I view hiking as a non-social endeavor and as such I tend to prefer scenes like this:

Or this:

Or this:

More than I do areas that people congregate around – which was actually the only real flaw with going to Yellowstone during peak season.

After a while the people started tapering off and the trail started getting a bit more rugged.

It was around in here that the trail made its first stream crossing:

And while that particular crossing was pretty simple, little did I know that the trail would cross like 25 billion more streams and creeks before the day was done.

I unfortunately don’t know the name of this “little” waterfall, but it was so peaceful and deserted that I actually stopped for a few minutes to drink some water.

By this point in time it was starting to warm up, and in the direct sun I’d even say it was getting hot.

The bugs started waking up around that time too, but honestly they never got that bad – though maybe that was because I had used bug spray.

As you move deeper into the canyon you get into some very old growth forests.

These “lower” portions of the canyon had a fairly gentle elevation gain.

It was just enough that you knew you were moving upwards, but not enough that you were out of breath (at least I wasn’t).

Many of the areas were just about as “postcard material” for the west as one could imagine.

There were even some fish moving down the creek, though I failed to capture them in any photo.

The first falls that I really got up close and personal with were Chasm Falls.

These falls were so-called because they quickly descend into this chasm – makes sense.

Tristen loved the waterfalls. I think this was the closest he has ever been to one before.

He really wanted to go swimming, but without Valentino here I wasn’t about to let Tristen go play in a waterfall.

After passing Chasm Falls it wasn’t long before we came to another set of a falls – it really is a great trail for waterfalls.

They ranged from small and simple, to fairly large and grandiose.

There seemed to be huge stream network all connecting into Hyalite Creek, so the sound of water was never too far off.

Of course the downside to that is that it seemed like every 10 minutes you were dealing with another water crossing.

However most of them weren’t too bad and they were all pretty.

I mainly just wanted to avoid getting wet socks, as that is a surefire way to get a major blister.

Around this point the trail really started to climb. It still wasn’t anything crazy, but you could definitely feel the non-stop uphill burn starting to set in.

Here I came to my nemesis crossing. The problem was that it was covered in moss, even the wood. So you had to step carefully but quickly at the same time lest you just slide off.

I was navigating it pretty well, until the very end when I mistakenly thought I had made it and then my foot slipped off a rock.

Fortunately I was able to grab a branch and not fall backwards into the stream. So all I got was a muddy shoe, a muddy sock, and slightly scratched up ankle. Tristen thought the whole affair was pretty manlies.

Here it is from the other side, those two larger rocks on the left edge are where I slipped backwards.

That was the last of the persnickety crossings though, and with the midday sun it didn’t take long for the mud to dry on my foot.

As the trail makes long sweeping switchbacks up the canyon you get continuously better views as you get higher.

Oddly enough, they put log-bridges across the next few sets of streams, one of which was nowhere near as bad as my nemesis crossing. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.

And in case you were wondering, the waterfalls were still plentiful this high up.

By this point you’ve gotten pretty far from civilization and other hikers start to become few and far between. As such, there were a lot of downed-trees to deal with, but most of them had been “managed” such as this one, making them easier to cross.

Things started to open up a bit as we got higher up the canyon.

Though that didn’t stop the trail from flip-flopping on whether it wanted to be a trail, a mudslide, or a stream.

I passed by S’il vous Plaît Falls.

I honestly have no idea why they have that name.

From there the trail continues onwards and upwards, with some trees that managed to fall in really weird ways.

There were a few non-bridge crossings higher up, but they weren’t too bad.

The hill the trail crawled up was much steeper than it looks.

Just past that crossing was a wonderful view of the canyon.

It just so happened that this was where an extremely annoying duo finally passed me. Their stupid dog (may it be hit by a car) would run ahead of them maybe 10 feet, and then turn around and howl over and over until they caught up. It had been doing this continuously ever since they’d came within audible distance. More than a few people had complained about it as I passed them. Well, when the duo and their hellhound finally passed me, it was just howling over and over (right next to me) and they were walking along chatting like everything was cool (may they all be hit by a car semi). Fortunately they were switching back and forth between jogging and walking, so I slowed my pace just a bit and they passed me quick enough, though I still heard their stupid dog for the next 10 minutes off in the distance. So much for seeing wildlife.

Once I’d returned to solitude I passed another waterfall.

I’d gotten just high enough at this point that the trees weren’t blocking the canyon views as much either.

Here is a pretty good shot of what the trail looked like:

Awesomeness.

Finally I came across a sign that mentioned my destination.

It was kind of funny; the top part of the sign had broken off so someone had had to carve the word “Lake” into the sign in addition to the word peak.

See, this trail is most popular for the first few waterfalls, but after that the next most popular destination is Hyalite Lake, an alpine lake that sets in the cirque of Hyalite Peak. From there, another 2 mile long spur trail leads up to the peak, and is much less traversed due to its difficulty.

After passing by the sign, you start getting into some alpine meadows.

And from there it isn’t much further to the lake.

That stupid dog was up there, howling its brains out. Though to my enjoyment there was a group of people talking about drowning the dog (and “maybe the two douchebags with it”) as I walked toward the lake. It’s nice to have a mutual hatred of things.

After putting some distance between us and the “crowd” (I use the term extremely relatively here) Tristen and I had a snack and truck break.

If you look very closely Tristen has his T-Rex transport truck on the log in front of him – he carries it around in his backpack a lot.

Here is a nice semi-panoramic shot of the lake.

Next to the lake were lots of smaller streams and bodies of water.

I set off on the path around the lake to see it from some more angles.

The little “ponds” were really all over the place, it was neat.

While crossing around one of these little “ponds” I bashed my knee into something. To be honest I’m not entirely sure what, but I think it was a narrow stump. It hurt like bajasus even though it didn’t look to bad.

After hobbling around internally “heeing” to the heavens for a minute, we resumed our route towards the peak.

There was another very worn sign leading the way:

There it is, Hyalite Peak, looking over the lake and “only” 2 miles away.

The area up above the lake was mostly deserted and it was gorgeous.

There were even a few marmots in the area, though unlike the marmots on Pike’s Peak I completely failed to capture a photo of them. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was hiking on increasingly steep terrain rather than riding a train.

Tristen and I found several cairns along the trail, and as we are cairn-bros we always put rocks on them.

This portion of the trail started gaining elevation really quick.

I can clearly remember, when I took this exact photo I was thinking to myself “Jesus Christ:”

Yeah this rocky area was not only steep, but it was quite hard on the feet.

That said, we did find a little cairn, sort of hidden from view, and we added to it.

Right about that time Tristen noticed something far off in the distance. Do you see it?

If not, have no fear, I’ll explain it in a second, but it was a great “Tristen Moment” for sure.

As we neared the “ridge” or “saddle” of Hyalite Peak, things got real steep.

They also got even more rocky (i.e. the trail was rock) in a few parts, and somewhere in here I mashed my right foot against something while working my way up the ricks. It hurt pretty good at the time, but I didn’t realize until later that my second toe on the right foot absorbed the brunt of it.

Despite the level of exertion required, it was a beautiful area.

Still, as nice as it was, and as much solitude as there was, there is no way of sugarcoating the fact that this part of the trail was rough going.

Not only was it steep, it was rocky, and not only was it rocky, it was covered in loose rocks.

And in those rocks we found an itty-bitty baby cairn, or maybe it was just a pile of rocks in a rock. Either way we added some more rock bros to the pile.

There was also this humongous boulder with really cool patterns just sort of chilling right in the middle of the cliff face. I have no idea how it got there or why it hasn’t fallen.

Next up was the only area where there was really enough snow left to cause problems.

The issues here were twofold. First, the snow itself was just thawed enough that it was no longer sturdy. So, you step wrong and it breaks free and you find yourself flailing wildly down several hundred feet of rocks. Second, the gravel near the snow is way too loose to support your weight. So, step wrong and it breaks free and you find yourself flailing wildly down several hundred feet of rocks. I actually met a few groups who had turned around at this point, which had to be rough since the summit is right there above you after at least 4-5 hours of hiking.

Anyways, the result is that you’re kind of stuck between a snow and a gravel place. Fortunately I’m pretty decent at treading lightly, so I made it without much issue other than brief moment of panic when the trail itself shifted under me.

This photo gives you a good idea of where that snow bank was:

By this point I’d caught up to some people, and I actually saw one of them eat snow hard ahead of me. In fact I thought he’d gotten knocked unconscious for a second, but then he got up. He was being really stupid and trying to diagonally cross the snow bank as a shortcut. Yeah don’t do that. He is really lucky he fell where he did, because had he been like 20ft lower or higher he probably would have gotten shredded into a chunky blob as he plummeted down the cliff face. Had it been the dog people (or preferably their dog) I couldn’t have cared less, but this particular person I hadn’t interacted with enough to feel completely ambivalent about their savage death, should it occur. 🙂

Once past the two (really 2.5) snow banks, I made it up to the ridge. Here I was met with a huge blast of wind, which wasn’t unexpected this time. I took a photo of the ridge, but the wind ensured that my finger made it into the shot (it’s surprisingly hard to have your phone not get blown out of your hand).

Here is a nice view of the cirque I’d just worked my way up through, you can see the trail down there.

Just because the summit was close doesn’t mean that getting there was going to be easy. This last little jaunt beat the piss out of my respiratory system.

Here is a shot looking back on the ridge:

These are pretty, but in reality I use them as an excuse to stop and breathe for a second.

There wasn’t so much a path at this point as there was a scramble up some rocks.

Just below the summit I paused and took this photo.

Do you see it? What Tristen was looking at? Let me zoom it in a bit for you.

Still don’t see it? Maybe this will help.

There you go. That’s Tristen’s Mountain! Yep, what Tristen had noticed on the way up was that he was going to have conquered two adjacent highest peaks: The highest peak in the Bridger Mountains (Sacagawea) and the highest peak in the Hyalite region [Gallatin Range] (Hyalite Peak)!

Here is a map that shows the “Tristen Peaks” and where they are located. Notice how they form a giant “gate” for Bozeman?

Also if you were curious, Storm Rastle’ is located at the green star and circle on the map.

Here is Tristen roaring while looking at the distant Sacagawea Peak. He has now pretty much dominated the entire area.

This is a pretty nice downward-angle shot of Hyalite Canyon. Hyalite Lake is that body of water in lower-mid right side of the photo, whereas Hyalite Reservoir is that hard-to-see body of water way out near the mouth of the canyon. Bozeman lay in the valley below the distant Bridgers.

I thought this was a really cool ridge formation on the east side of Hyalite Peak. Tristen said it would make a good wall, I agree with him.

This shot is angled to the southeast.

And here is Tristen, complete with his truck, lording over his domain from 10,298’ in the sky.

After a well-deserved snack and water break at the summit, we started heading back down. We had a long hike ahead of us to get back to Moose II.

Those 2.5 snow banks we had passed earlier now marked the most dangerous part of the entire return hike.

All of the dangerous features I described before were still in effect, but now I was going down. And that’s the hilariously ironic thing about hiking, when you’re going up it’s so physically difficult that you envy the people going down. Yet, when it’s your turn to go down, you then realize that not only does going down still cause physical issues (knees and ankles) its way more dangerous. Luckily, because I think about stuff like this, I had mentally mapped out my descent plan while ascending. So, notwithstanding a few minor slips and slides, I made it past the two snow banks with little more than a cold and muddy hand.

Once I was back down into the cirque the wind died down and the rocks were the only thing causing trouble.

I noticed a couple of little crossings on the way back that I didn’t on the way up, interesting how stuff like that happens while hiking.

As I was crossing the rocky fields I noticed that my feet were really banged up at this point; I was definitely getting a blister on my left foot and my right second toe really felt mashed. But, what can you do? You just gotta’ keep walking.

Fortunately when it comes to places to walk, Hyalite Canyon is pretty high on the list (*ba dum tss*).

One of our cairns.

Another of our cairns.

I saw a marmot near this crossing, and once again failed to photograph it.

While the day had started off cold, I have to admit that it had gotten hot enough at this point that I was thankful to reach the tree line.

We stopped for some water at Hyalite Lake.

It’s a very good “chilling” spot after coming down from the summit.

It was kind of nice, because it was getting “later” (e.g. after 3pm) in the day most of the people were now clustered more around the trailhead, so I dealt with less traffic coming back.

Also, because I was on the return trip I knew time wasn’t as much of an issue, so I was able to check out little side paths and their respective views.

Eventually I came to my nemesis crossing:

Though this time I crossed it without issue, and even I managed my way across the next crossing without getting wet as well!

Though I still wondered about why some of the larger crossings didn’t have one of these:

Getting to see the waterfalls in both the morning and afternoon light was really neat.

What wasn’t neat was dealing with the occasional dirt bikers. The Hyalite Canyon Trail is what is called a “mixed use” trail (e.g. mountain bikes, horses, dirt bikes) during certain times of the year, and during that period the trail can be used for dirt bikes from Sunday through Thursday. Since it was Sunday it meant I had to deal with them. Now, in fairness I only encountered 4 groups of them in about 7.5 hours, and of those 4 groups 2 were courteous. However, there were 2 groups that were going so fast they were sliding off the trail and just about hit me. I was not amused, especially when they were tearing the trail up. Here are two of the culprits:

I can generally deal with mountain bikers (though there are exceptions, of course) but dirt bikes just seem woefully out of place on a hiking trail. Can’t say I’m a fan of allowing them to use them. Plus, if you hope to see any wildlife, a dirt bike will ensure that won’t happen. Fortunately the dirt bikers really can’t get their bikes to the upper altitudes very easily (at least not without dying) so that was a plus.

Eventually we came back to Chasm Falls:

Of the smaller falls I think it was my favorite because of how you could look down into the chasm without imperiling yourself.

After that we started descending into the lower canyon again.

I spotted this little flower growing all by its lonesome. I took a photo of it because I thought it was pretty.

Plus, I liked the fact that it sprung up out in the non-flower lands. As you can see it wasn’t really in the middle of a flower metropolis by any means:

Of course there were lots of wildflowers along the path, probably not as many as earlier in the summer, but still plenty.

It was actually just on the other side of that meadow that I met up with the two people I’d spoken too near the beginning of the day. They hadn’t made it to the summit (too steep) but they had made it to the lake. We chatted a bit and I showed them my battle scars and then I was on my way. I did think it was kind of interesting that I’d not only seen then again, but that I had caught up with them after adding a bit over 4 more miles to my hike (not to mention that these were the 4 steepest miles of the whole trail). Of course I’ve recently realized that I’m a decently fast hiker. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not breaking any trail records and could never keep up with the Hotshots but I’m at least in the “high-average” territory, if not the “middle-upper” range. I say this because I generally only get passed by about 5-10% of people, whereas I tend to pass about 90-95% of people. Of course you have all sorts of sample issues there, so I’m probably not that fast, but still I feel safe in saying I’m above average, especially when you consider my leg issues.

After parting with the duo, I hiked on for a bit further down into the canyon until eventually I met up with the Grotto Falls trail and with it more people.

From there it was just a (comparatively) short jaunt back to Moose II. All in all Tristen and I spent approximately 7 hours and 20 minutes going from Moose II to summit to Moose II, and that was with lots of photo stops. I thought that was pretty good when all the guides said to allow 9 hours in non-snow conditions (not that I really had snow conditions, but hey, there was snow).

Yet, despite that adventure, the day wasn’t over yet! See, there are four “major” trails in Hyalite Canyon: The Hyalite Trail (to either the lake or all the way to the summit), The Grotto Falls Trail, the Palisade Falls Trail, and the Emerald & Heather Lakes Trail (and there are of course a multitude of lesser-known trails). At the time I didn’t know about the Emerald & Heather Lakes Trail, which turned out to be a good thing – more on that in a moment. For Sunday my goals were to do all three trails I knew about, Hyalite, Grotto Falls, and Palisade Falls. I had no idea just how much walking that goal would entail, but hey, I’m rarely one to think small.

So, having done Hyalite and Grotto Falls, Tristen and I set out for Palisade Falls.

Meem had actually been out to Palisade Falls when she had rented her Jeep.

As you can see from this sign, the Palisade Falls trail is much more, ehm “people friendly” than the Hyalite and even the Grotto Falls trails are.

In fact the entire trail is paved right up until the falls.

Still, it was still somewhat steep-ish in a couple of areas, and I was power walking, which was enough to have me sweating a little by the time I reached the falls.

Next to the falls were a couple of itty-bitty caves, it made me think of Valentino.

The falls are located in this sort of “crevice” area in the cliff face which has really cool rock formations.

You can either stay back a bit and take in the falls, or you can really get right up to the base of them.

I think it’s obvious which option I chose.

There was some dumbass (complete with beer in hand – seriously) trying to climb the falls (more on him in a second) in the wet-rock and moss area, but Tristen and I decided not to be dipshits and climbed up a dry area for a better view.

We gained some decent elevation this way, and were able to see up and out of the falls area.

Here are those little caves I was talking about:

Tristen quite liked these falls.

He found that they provided a good acoustic and visual backdrop while playing with his truck.

Hiking alone can be hard enough, try doing it with a Tyrannosaurus Rex in your backpack, and further with a truck inside the T-Rex’s backpack.

Manries.

Here’s a pretty cool view of where we were at:

After deciding that the rocks above us were a bit too sketchy looking to proceed anything further for our tastes, we headed back down.

We then decided to explore those caves a little bit, but really just stayed at the entrance because God knows what was down in there.

Right about the time I was heading back down to the path from the caves, I heard some shouting; I looked back up at the falls and there was 1) a very panicked girl at the base of the falls shouting up at 2) The aforementioned moron who had decided to climb the falls. Turns out the dumbass had gotten himself stuck. Remember how I was talking about how going up is actually easier than going down? Yep. Now, before you start to feel sorry for this dipshit, keep in mind that while you are allowed to climb around the falls, he was ignoring the signs which explicitly said “Do not climb Palisade Falls.” Yep. Plus, the fact that he had climbed up there while drinking a beer (which you aren’t supposed to have there in the first place) makes him even less deserving of any non-negative emotion. From the sound of his voice I could tell that he was actually getting pretty nervous. I was glad. I left. I haven’t heard any local news of a dumbass plummeting to their death on the rocks at Palisade Falls, so he probably survived to continue to be a moron. Shame.

As you can see I just ooze caring feelings for people. 🙂

Once we made our way back down to the trailhead we found that Moose II was wrapping up a conservation with another car about quantum harmonic oscillators. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

After Moose II wrapped up his conversation, Tristen I were ready to roll out. We were pooped and we still had an hour’s drive to get home and laundry waiting on us.

Of course that didn’t stop Tristen from taking the wheel before we could even get out of the parking lot.

In fact Tristen drove us all the way out of Hyalite Canyon..

..and to the outskirts of Bozeman before he decided it was my turn.

By the time we reached our house it was starting to look like it might rain.

Though I don’t think it ever did, which was unfortunate because Moose II was FILTHY. Oh lawds if ever a Ford Focus was dirty, then Moose II was it. Tristen thought it was exceptionally manly.

After a much needed shower I assessed the damage to my physical form.

Hey it looked more swollen in person, don’t judge.

The cut on my left lower knee was nice and swollen and made my whole knee ache, but there was no serious damage. I had a nice blister forming on my left foot-pad and I also had some weird pain in my left heel – probably a mild bone bruise – but there was no serious damage. There were some minor scraps on my left ankle from my nemesis crossing, but there was no serious damage. On my right foot my second toe had blood under the toenail – a result of that bashing some rock gave it, and in truth this toe has hurt more in the days since than anything else, but there was no serious damage. And other than that, it was mainly just soreness and aches and pains. Interestingly enough my legs weren’t that bad, though in fairness I had consumed 2 tramadol that day (but still, even since then my legs haven’t been as bad as my feet, it’s weird).

After taking note of my “rattle rounds” I noticed that I had actually changed enough altitude that day that my water bottles had compressed on themselves, just like they do if you fly in a plane.

I thought that was kind of funny and cool, though I still wish I would have taken 5 bottles of water instead of just 4 (as a general rule, I’ve always found that I want less food than I think I would, and more water than I think I would when hiking).

For dinner I literally just through random things into a pan and cooked them.

Poor man’s crab, random cheese bits, random spices, and mustard.

But it turned out well, so who cares – not me! 🙂

I was obviously really tired, so after laundry and my other Sunday chores were done I had a couple beers and then got to bed. Sadly I slept really poorly (I think I was too tired to sleep, if that makes any sense) and so I spent most of Monday in a fugue state.

Still, in my defense, I think I had a right to be pretty tired. On Sunday alone I had walked 35.66 miles, or 55,109 steps.

That is a full 18,776 steps over my previous record in Santa Fe when Pig and I walked to Mount Atalaya, climbed it, and then walked home.

My phone says I was active for 470 minutes (roughly 7 hours and 48 minutes) but I think that is quite under-reported because even if the phone wasn’t counting my “standing” or “sitting” time I still think I was moving more than that.

But still, even if it’s not totally accurate, it provides a reference against the Santa Fe hike.

If, for whatever reason, that doesn’t seem like a whole lot to you, then you must remember that about 1/2 of it was uphill (and not just any hills mind you, the mountain variety of hill).

So, in total, from Friday to Saturday I walked 63.69 miles – quite a feat for yours truly, and in truth this trio of days, particularly Sunday, may well be The Hike of all time for me, but who knows. That’s precisely why I gave this post the simple title of “The Hike,” it’s obviously not because I haven’t done other hikes, and not because I won’t continue to do more hikes. Heck, I might even do longer hikes in the future. But this will always be The Hike for me, because it was the first time in my life that I sat out on a hike that I truthfully wasn’t sure I could do (based on distance and my legs, etc.) – and I did it, where others turned back, I pushed forward.

And in fairness, it’s not like I’m ready for the Seven Summits now (or that I ever will be), but at the same time, I also climb mountains with a dinosaur on my back. 🙂

Plus, I was so sore on Monday that I couldn’t even get my morning run in, lol. That said, I’m slowly getting back to normal and it’s mostly just the toe on my right foot that is still causing me issues. The funny thing is though, remember how I mentioned the Emerald and Heather Lakes Trail? Yeah, the other major trail up in Hyalite Canyon. Well, the office is going to hike that trail on Saturday at 9am, all 11 miles of it.

Yep.

The things I do. 🙂

Of course in addition to the surge of walking, I’ve also had the biggest work surge this week that I’ve had the entire summer thus far, and that’s required a fair amount of “overtime” (I put it in scare quotes because I don’t really get overtime), so not only I am sore, I’m mentally stressed. But hey, I got to go to a swanky old hotel for a “Bison Party!”

What is a “Bison Party” you might ask? Well, it’s basically a celebration of recent victories that allow wild bison to roam beyond the borders of Yellowstone National Park without being hazed (chased via helicopters, gunfire, etc.) or killed. So it was a happy event full of various environmentalist and conservationist organizations – oh and they had free food and beer too, always a plus.

Then, on the way back to my car after the event, I walked by one of Bozeman’s trademark traffic boxes, that was covered in all sorts of animals. How cool.

So, I might be physically and mentally tired, and I might be going on another big ole’ hike this weekend, but hey, at least I’m doing good work and getting out there and seeing little bits of this big ole’ world in which we live.

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. A colleague brought in a TON of freshly picked cherries from the Flathead Lake area here in MT, I instantly thought of a certain little polar bear!